Greener Green II: The Balls Brigade

by Peter Sowatskey

  "It's all in my library, if you have twenty years or so."

  "Aeolin and I may hold you to your word. But to continue, the superiority of this fighting method is that there is always a massive reserve, which can be brought to aid any of the initial three application points."

  I sub-voiced, 'Betty, are you absorbing this'?

  YES, ESSENCES OF DEAD MONKS SAY THE SAME. GO ON. I'M LISTENING

  Suzy, seeing my inattention, paused, but resumed when 'I' returned, "The application of the Dragon style against a superior enemy is three balls retreat, making an energy sack anchored to them. When the enemy goes into the sack, the forth ball goes in also and the sack is closed. Because the enemy is no longer able to draw strength from its fellows, victory is easier. Or, if you're defeat, the enemy is still in the sack and must expend more energy to escape. Hopefully, then, he is weak enough to be killed by the three balls. Killing at this level means the enemy is stripped of its will; its identity and reason to resist. That's a brief view of fifty years of learning and practice."

  The General had a baffled look on his face and said, "But that's all imaginary, isn't it?"

  Suzy stiffened, "Whether one is dead because his mind has been overwhelmed, or because he has a bayonet in his guts, he is equally dead."

  "That's true. I've seen soldiers unable to continue because of what they'd seen. I suppose it would work like that."

  I said, "That's exactly the problem. We had a small skirmish in another solar system recently. Why exactly, the 'battle hardened soldiers' minds failed, is not the question, they did. In the end, we won, but not because the individual soldier prevailed. We overcame because planning foresaw the possibility of personal failure. No, it's not imaginary, though it could be said to have to do with imagination. Let's think of this and speak of it tomorrow evening. I feel tomorrow will add to our knowledge."

  The next morning had a glorious sunrise. I watched it through a window in my bedroom before I arose. Then, Betty came into my mind.

  GREETINGS, NICE SUNRISE, 437 OF THE LOCAL RULERS AND THEIR ADMINISTRATORS WILL WAKE UP WITH 101 OF EVERYTHING I COULD THINK OF IN THEIR HEADS. THEY'LL ALSO KNOW WHICH OF THEIR COMPANY HAS BEEN CHANGED. WE'LL SEE WHAT THAT LEADS TO. YOUR MONKS SHOULD NOT BE BOTHERED FOR SOME TIME. NEW LEADERS, WE'LL DO THE SAME. GOOD LUCK HUNTING YOUR MOUNTAIN GOATS

  She gave me an idea. I rushed through my routine and went to the control room. Mountain goats need a place to land and spring anew from. So did space shuttles of the kind Rafe flew. I programmed the computer to start with the highest elevation and work downward in hundred meter increments. When the Phaeton space stations were evacuated, there would have been multiple trips, but no time for searching out optimum sites. They would have came down to the first possible landing site, bored a hole in the cliff face, unloaded and went back for more people and goods. After my message last night I was confident I would find the place.

  Satisfied it was doing what I wanted, I went to the dining room. The General seemed have half the possible selections for breakfast, and appeared as bright as the sun I'd seen. He threw me a half salute with his knife hand and continued eating and reading my FO status reports. After all, I hadn't forbidden him to do so. They appeared on my table every morning whether I was aboard or not. Maybe he could come up with some recommendations.

  Suzy and Aeolin, on the other hand, appeared a bit ragged. I asked, "Up all night?"

  Suzy said, "Most of it. It was so kind of you to include Chinese volumes in your library. They end in the year 2,050. Why?"

  Not wanting to go there, I just said, "That's the most recent my supplier had. All the volumes in the seven major language groups end there."

  "So I saw. Humans are so stupid, aren't we?"

  "I came from Sylvern, so I can't comment about that. Most societies make developmental mistakes."

  "Be honest. Humans are especially dumb aren't they?"

  I still didn't want to go there, "Yes, they are."

  Her demeanor grew grimmer. I ordered my usual 4,500 calories of cooked grains and meat and set about getting it inside me. The General smiled in approval. He didn't know about sped up metabolisms, but on second thought looking at his spread, maybe he did.

  I finished and dumped my remains down the disposal, went to the drink dispenser and pushed a three button combination, twice. I carried the results to Suzy and Aeolin and said, "This will get you through the day."

  At 0900, I called Frigate One of my backup pair and told them to leave an anti-grav viewer with an Invis shield at 10,000 feet and follow me. I knew 'Two' would be at 50,000 feet, viewing the Asian continent.

  OPERATIONAL AREA HIMALAYAN MOUNTAINS ASIA SEPT, 1854

  M.VERDAI DUNN-BERGER

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I was satisfied that I had covered all possible contingencies and could go on with the second phase of my trip, searching for the Phaetons.

  I thought about having the computer do a view of what side of the mountain was facing the Moon when the explosion happened inside it, but the position of the Earth's North Pole changed many times since then. It probably would be beyond its capacity to resolve the problem. So we were going to do it the old fashioned way. We were going to each possible landing place for escape shuttles and knock on the door.

  At the thirty ninth site it was that simple. The request for entry played over the loudspeakers in the Phaeton language, and on every frequency known to anyone, at very low power. A door blinked open. It was so big I could have put four of my ships in at one time. I went in, against all my good sense. I was glad my passengers didn't know the dangers. They might have balked. I considered each individually and thought 'no, they probably would be as crazy as me'.

  Once inside, the door shut behind us and a blinking X in a circle indicated where I should land. I did, and put all of the exterior lights on that the ship had. In every direction, other than the wall we'd come through, was more cavern. Leaving the lights on, I got ready to disembark. Tritchka, who'd done nothing but observe events yesterday, came along to watch my back.

  I said to the other three, "Go to the dining room and sit at the table. A wall, which you can walk through, will form around the table, and you'll see all directions of what I see. You'll see more than me; enjoy."

  Walking along the corridor to the door, I said, "Tritchka, walk slightly behind. Watch everything. Don't shoot if I don't. They may test us, test our nerves."

  Tritchka said, "You shoot, I shoot, not, hold peace."

  "Exactly."

  We walked down the gang plank. The ship door shut behind us. A small vehicle approached. It had four wheels, two rows of seats, and a one lever control, (the same the galaxy over.) It stopped about five feet away. The driver, an old man in a robe with a hood, said in Phaeton, which mine and Tritchka's translators changed to English, "Greetings to both. I am Captain Taln Griffus. It is my 10,000 years to stand watch, interesting years, with two such beauties to grace our barren caverns. Would I were in my youth. You would, of course, not be here had Prestrillo not sent you. Did he escape?"

  "No, he didn't, not from the station, but he remembered, and here we are."

  "Yes indeed, in a drafty cavern. Let's go elsewhere. Your friends can come later. Jump in."

  We stepped in, me in front and Tritchka in back, and sped away at about five miles per hour. Once out of my ship's light, the runabout became its own light source until we came to an eighty foot wide tunnel with lights on the forty foot high ceiling. The lights weren't bright, but adequate. All this progress was accompanied with tales, of Taln and Prestrillo, involved in some sort of mischief while in some academy together. Eventually we came to a broad high dome, hard to estimate the size, with various other tunnels departing from it. We parked in front of a convex expanse of glass to the side away from the tunnels, fifty feet wide, at least.

  Taln said, "This is my office. I sit here and see much traffic coming and going, in my mind of course. There's been no actual traffic for meaningless millions of years.
Come in. I have soft chairs and hot drinks and tales to tell, which will keep you spell bound."

  Inside was a raised (two foot) platform on which was a coffee table with soft appearing upholstered chairs around it. There were work stations around the convex window. I could imagine traffic being directed from here, loads of supplies being kept track of. Why had it stopped?

  Taln brought something in steaming mugs and said, "No fear. Your bodies have been analyzed. You will like this."

  I didn't tell him Rangers couldn't be poisoned. Probably Indians had some immediate judgment of good things too. Taln seated himself, and we did too. He, where we could look out at the traffic, (which went no more.)

  He said, "Our drinks cool, but they can be refreshed. You, M.Verdai Dunn Berger, Ranger, FO of ARK IV, have in you the power to refresh the traffic. But I get ahead of myself. No sense to propose anew with old questions yet unanswered. Ask."

  I asked the one that was always uppermost in Prestrillo's mind, "Where did the essences of the Phaetons go?"

  "From the Stations? Here. Some we erased, those too corrupted by the IL ANNU KI. We finally realized what was going on. We have complex procedures for dealing with minds. But we were always looking for our own internal weakness. Then we figured it out. Our Genetic Track was sabotaged. The closer we got to high sentience, the larger were the basement pillars withdrawn from beneath us. We haven't done a roll call for a very long time. A lot have assuredly lost their identity and are just blank essences, as you call them."

  "What happened to the people of Phaeton, those on the planet?"

  "As far as we know, from broadcasts we overheard, they committed suicide. When they realized they weren't going to have a planet to migrate to, the population went mad, helped along by our mutual friends. There was an attempt to use the space stations, but too many conflicting parties who, never got a plan going. The Government tried to segregate and erase individuals to contain the madness. We who escaped from the space stations argued long and hard about going back to Phaeton and trying to help, but we were barely holding ourselves together. It took some extreme measures to do that, and finally it became a moot point. We were going to go out of our caves and make a civilization when our 'friends' arrived in force. Most of them went away eventually, but we never trusted ourselves to try again. So we sat here and observed it all until we lost interest and most asked for Storage."

  "And how many are in this Storage now?"

  "Like I said, we haven't done a mental roll call recently. Last roll call that I remember, we had 7,000 plus coherent mentalities, now who knows."

  "Why are you awake now?"

  "We only had rejuvenation on the Captains launches, so some record would be maintained for eventual report. We three Captains have been alternating 10,000 years alive, 20,000 in Storage. We had excellent medical facilities, but who foresaw what happened? Are the stations still phased out?"

  "No," I said, "Prestrillo remembered the codes and took them out. I don't personally know where they are now."

  Taln asked, "That's where you, FO, come in. I/we, Franb, and Jesere, the two other Captains would like to make an alliance. We get a Med Deck in here to bring however many can be salvaged out of storage. In return, you get complete access to our files. We've made advancements that you can use. Not the least of is our ability to eavesdrop without being noticed. We refined our electronics so thoroughly that we could even listen to the ANNU KI, without being noticed."

  I asked myself, 'could I make such an agreement? If I asked Betty, she would just throw the responsibility back on me'.

  I looked at Tritchka and saw how hard she had tried to follow the conversation. She said, "Spirits need."

  I said to Taln, "Fine, it is done. One last question, do you know of the dragon riders?"

  "How could you know of them? But no matter. Yes, I know. Our friends hunted them so we gave them refuge here in an unused cavern. They asked to be sealed in. They have an ability to adjust their time rate. I expect not many years have gone by for them."

  I felt like I was in a Vid flick. "You're telling me you have dragons and riders here now?"

  "Your translator must be malfunctioning. I didn't stutter."

  "No, my mind just didn't expand quickly enough. Please forgive me. Can I transmit out of here?"

  "To your Frigate, yes, and ask them to spatter their answering broadcast."

  Evidently he wasn't worried about radio waves so I figured telepathy was safe.

  Betty was in my mind quickly. She said, DON'T EVER AGAIN EVEN THINK OF ASKING ME TO MAKE YOUR DECISIONS. YOU'RE FO. BUT I DO UNDERSTAND THE SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES. WE'LL HAVE A MED DECK THERE IN FOUR HOURS BASED ON PRESTRILLO, MINUS THE RANGER ATOMIC BOMB. THE PHAETONS WILL BE PLEASANTLY SURPRISED TO SEE THAT THEY'VE EVOLVED. I WON'T TELL IF YOU WON'T.

  I said to Taln, "Four hours, you'd better make preparations. These people work quickly. Do the Dragon folk have a spokesperson?"

  "Lillien, she's a powerful person. Makes me want to swoon and wake up in her bed."

  "Probably wake up in her bone disposal yard."

  "There's that, but who'd care? You'll see."

  Before I went into the tunnel opening he indicated, I called Betty again and said, "I'm going into wonderland. Keep a close touch on me and Tritchka, and if we begin to fade, tell us so."

  I HOPE YOU'RE EXAGGERATING, BUT WILL DO.

  Taln said he'd stick to his post and observe us remotely, said the pickups functioned most of the time. He'd observed the malfunctions correlated with moon cycles, oh goody.

  Tritchka and I got in the runabout, me in front and her in back, and rolled into the tunnel. We had plenty of light, but it consoled me not at all. We'd gone, to my estimate, about five miles when ahead appeared a flashing blue light. Blue means danger in Phaeton. There was a sign on both sides of the tunnel. We read it through the translator. "Go this way further and become the next meal."

  I smiled and congratulated the sign writer on having a sense of humor. I started comment to Tritchka over my shoulder but I saw no smiles. Damn, maybe I should take the sign literally.

  We continued on to a wall across the whole tunnel. It had a human sized door, and around that a door about thirty feet high and thirty feet wide. The wall was remarkable for its massiveness; there were buttresses off the wall a meter wide from floor to ceiling every second meter. Clearly this wall held something at bay. I parked the runabout heading back toward where we had come. Maybe it would be useful in escaping from slow earthworms.

  We went to the door and knocked. A sound from inside translated to; 'come in.' We did, and entered into a forty meter deep section of the tunnel. In front of us another wall braced like the first held another door in a door. I only saw the wall and door in the back of my mind because standing in the middle of the room loomed a figure about seven feet tall, seemingly feminine. Her femininity became more evident as we drew closer. She had long, thin, but muscular legs and wide hips. She stood at a slant her overly developed buttocks evident. (Well overly for my taste) She wore the briefest of loin cloths. Her breasts stood out, covered/accentuated by a crisscross swathing which she, evidently, called a brassiere. Her nipples stood out at least 2cm from her breasts. She didn't need the swathing to hold them up anymore than I did. I felt my nipples responding and growing hard. She had a thin face with wide open eyes which I looked into. I felt myself slightly weak as if a part of me which had been holding me up went to her. Her smile widened and she said in hissing tones, "Welcome M.Verdai. We may share the frost together when you wish."

  A picture came into my mind about bodies entwined to ward off coldness and both creating an ebb and flow of warmth.

  I said, "Welcome Lillien. We will do as you invite as soon as duties permit."

  She said, "Duties hinder living ever so much. Let us put them behind us so to hasten our clinging."

  I noticed a shifting of her feet; they had been human. Now they were talons flexing against the floor. Perhaps I didn't notice when we were fu
rther apart than our present two meters.

  "Oh, no need for concern. What we stand on, changes from time to time. I will change back. The only parts of us which change are our feet and our hands."

  What held my attention more were her arms, now ending with three talons, with a fourth opposing. They flexed with strength. Then I noted the cross bow strapped to her left forearm. From the fifty centimeter bow's thickness, I plainly saw it would take great strength to cock it. I would have to fairly exert myself to do so. She turned her head, which twitched her long black hair, exposing the handles of two swords protruding above her shoulders. If this was the way to meet company, what constituted war regalia? Her hands changed back to hands, and she said, "War and peace the same. Only peace goes slow and war goes fast, live both."

  "There is, to me, truth in what you say. Maybe you will stand besides us when we battle the ANNU KI."

  She barely stopped her hands from grasping the swords behind her.

  "We fought them until we were but fifty. Then we withdrew to gather and come forth and fight more. We are ready to go forth, us fifty, to death, but when one dies a thousand perish."

  "You are saying you have a thousand of your kind inside you?"

  She paused, eyes glazing over and then said, "For me 973, others maybe more, didn't ask."

  "Can you excuse me while I confer?"

  "Yes, natural to do. I will talk with your aide who has also many in her."

  'Betty'.

  YES, NIKEN WILL FREE UP ANOTHER TRANSPORTER TO ALLOW US TO MAKE ANOTHER PORTABLE UNASSIGNED MED DECK. IT WILL ARRIVE IN EIGHT HOURS. YOUR LILLIEN NEEDS A MALE FOR THE OTHER MODEL. SEE YOU THEN.

  I coughed politely and the two stopped talking. "In eight hours a vessel will arrive in the tunnel, which will be capable of giving form to your people, one by one. To do this, you have to wake up your male."

  "I personally have no male, want no male, but I understand. I'm just sorrowful that males needed, must talk to our learned. Meanwhile, I will wake up a male who lives to fight. Pardon. Done. M.Verdai, your mind is a smoky chamber with many pictures. Why don't we look at some? Has your form the need to sit? Mine doesn't but you are no less when yours does."