Challenges of the Deeps

by Spoor,Ryk E

  “Leader Vayhen,” Laila said, “our apologies for making you wait on what is obviously urgent business; I felt it was important to have Doctor Sandrisson here as an additional representative of the Captain’s will, since you impressed on us the urgency of your problem.”

  “No apology needed,” Sangrey answered. “Indeed, I must thank you all for seeing me so promptly.” Behind the formal wording Simon could sense a huge amount of nervousness. That subliminal over-sense allowed him to read the alien’s posture, scent, and motions. He’s actually afraid of something.

  “Now, please, tell us the problem, Leader Vayhen,” Carl said.

  “Ah, yes. Of course.” There was a thud-click from inside the creature—a sound that he knew had to do with the way they breathed, and one that sounded very much like a nervous swallow in context. “First …I must inquire as to whether I am correct in understanding that the name ‘Austin’ is a line or clan designation?”

  What in the world …? “It is what we would call a family name, so yes, in a way,” Simon answered. “That is, in general, someone with that last name had at least one parent with that name, and will probably have other relations with that name—although not all of them will.”

  If anything, Vayhen looked more tense; his manipulator tendrils were stiff and moved in a jerky fashion. “Oh, dear. You see, I have to come here to both demand an apology from your Faction, and possibly to present an apology as well.”

  Well, that is certainly a most …interesting way to present one’s situation. “Sangrey,” Laila said, “if the Faction of Humanity, or any of us, owe you an apology we will most certainly give you one, but we must ask you to please clarify what is going on! None of us have any idea what either of us would have to apologize for!”

  “Ahh. May the mud rise above me, I am too nervous!” A vibration of color rippled up Sangrey’s flanks. “It may seem strange to you, Doctor Canning, Doctor Edlund, Doctor Sandrisson …but your faction has been most terrifyingly spectacular in your arrival and success, and the thought of confronting you is most daunting to one such as myself.” He raised a manipulator. “Display relevant events at Docking 5.”

  An image formed in midair, of a group of people—people of multiple species—on one of the docking platforms of Nexus Arena. The group was following a lone human being, and was clearly agitated, shouting angry imprecations at the human, who was retorting in multiple human languages, wearing a broad grin all the while.

  “This …individual had entered into discussions with several of our people over various political events, but…” Sangrey seemed at a loss. “…but he did not discuss. That is, he seemed …intent on finding opportunities to insult people, to twist their words in dialogue, not arguing in good faith. And he continued this in a manner that was quite maddening, causing a number of our people and others to follow him, trying to shout him down or force him to be reasonable. Yet he continued.”

  Simon winced. Oh, Good Lord. “Sangrey, as a member of Humanity I do apologize. And I believe that all three of us apologize fully in Ariane’s place.”

  Laila rolled her eyes. “I knew we’d get some of his type in sooner or later, but I had thought the screening that was being done would be …but no, I suspect this was not included in the original specifications. Our laws don’t stop you from being deliberately rude, at least not reliably.”

  Simon caught a clearer fragment of dialogue and blinked in disbelief. Did he …he did. He actually said “I know you are but what am I” while taunting an alien mob! How is that even being translated?

  “But I am afraid it is not over,” Sangrey said, and his eyes were positively wincing.

  Abruptly, the mob lunged forward. Simon remembered: on the docks, many of the Arena’s usual protections against violence were relaxed or ignored entirely. There was a short struggle, and suddenly a single figure—a bipedal, human figure—fell, or was pushed, and plummeted away into the endless void below.

  “We were informed, alas, that his last name was Austin, and so I was afraid that…”

  Simon found himself suddenly laughing. “Oh, heavens, Sangrey, I understand. You thought your mob might have just killed off a relative of our Leader!”

  Despite the nonhuman appearance, Simon could see Sangrey starting to relax. “Then we did not?”

  Carl shook his head. “Ariane doesn’t have that many relatives, and I know most of them. I didn’t recognize that guy. See, while last names can indicate family, in most cases there’s a lot of different families with the same last name. And ‘Austin’ is a pretty common last name in the area of the world Ariane came from. I’ll check up just to be sure, but I’d bet money on that troll not being related to Ariane in any way.”

  The Leader of the Tantimorcan Faction relaxed even more visibly. “Troll?”

  Not translated, or translated too literally? Really, the Arena seems almost arbitrary in its translation. “A term that can mean a certain sort of monster,” Simon said, “but in this context means a person who derives amusement by bothering others in exactly the manner you describe, harassing them to get a response. Unfortunately our civilization doesn’t do much to stop such people; at home, you can just block people from contacting you. I am afraid that does not work so well here.”

  While it was in the abstract sad to see anyone die, Simon found he could not summon much sorrow for the man who’d brought the violence of the mob down upon him. In truth, Simon simply found it incomprehensible that some people would take joy in making others angry and upset. And now someone had died at the hands of a mob, and the late Mr. Austin’s habits had now caused a serious issue that had to be dealt with at the highest level.

  “You wouldn’t know this guy’s first name, would you?” Carl asked.

  The large toadlike creature was sagging down slightly; Simon thought this indicated relief, a relaxation after facing something terrifying. It was bemusing to think of humans as something terrifying, though. “The other name was Terry, I believe.”

  “I thought so!” Carl said. “This guy was notorious for this kind of stuff back home; I’ve actually heard of him before from Ariane, who was pissed that they shared the same last name. And you’re in real luck, Sangrey; according to a quick check of the records, he didn’t have any family of his own, doesn’t even have anyone in the ‘in case of emergency, contact’ slot of the form. So there probably won’t be too many people terribly broken up by the news. Maybe quite a few celebrating.”

  I would dearly love to leave it at that, Simon thought, but he knew he couldn’t—and a glance at Laila confirmed that she was already on it. “While that is something of a relief,” Laila said briskly, “your people did take the law into their own hands. I can’t just ignore that.”

  “This is most certainly understood, Doctor Canning. It is not entirely clear what happened at the end—it may have been at least partially an accident, but it may also have been as deliberate as it seems. We do not wish this to lie between us; what can we do as recompense?”

  “I presume there was an attempt to recover him?” Simon asked.

  “An alarm was given and some fliers dispatched by us and others, but …there were only some zikki found.”

  Simon could not keep from wincing himself. Zikki were fast-moving Arena predators, something like armored flying squid. If Mr. Austin had fallen into a group of those, well…

  He took a deep breath of his own. “Leader Vayhen, would you give us a moment to confer?”

  The manipulator tendrils spread wide. “Oh, certainly; do you wish me to leave?”

  “No, no, just give us a few moments.” The other two followed him out.

  Once the door closed, he looked at them. “Technically, it’s your decision, not mine.”

  Laila gave a dismissive sniff. “Legally perhaps, but we all know that you and DuQuesne are the ones she leans on, and she left you to give us the same backup.” She flicked a glance to Carl, who nodded.

  “What do you think, Simon?” Carl was clearly uncer
tain. “This is a sticky situation any way I look at it. I mean, that guy may have been a total asshole, but even being a world-class asshole doesn’t mean you should get killed.”

  Simon closed his eyes and frowned. “That rather depends on location and time, Carl. In many past civilizations, being an …asshole could, and often did, carry a penalty up to and including death. I am not entirely sure that in the setting of the Arena—where offending the wrong person could lead to a war—it is not in fact completely appropriate that we look at things in that light.”

  “Still,” Laila said thoughtfully, “we don’t want to set a precedent that our people can be disposed of by mobs.”

  “No. But Leader Vayhen has already accepted that there is wrongdoing on his side.” Simon was suddenly certain what Ariane would have done. “Laila, Carl, what do you think of this…”

  After he’d explained, he saw both Carl and Laila nodding. “Works for me,” Carl said. “I think it’s probably the best compromise.”

  “I concur,” Laila said. “I was thinking along similar lines; this confirms it.”

  “Then shall we?” The other two followed him in.

  Sangrey raised himself slightly as they entered. “You have come to a decision?”

  “We have, Leader Vayhen. The fact is that we, as Humanity, must accept a large part of the blame. It is imperative that we start screening all our people for such tendencies and keep those sorts at home where they won’t cause trouble. We should have done so already, and this event is a result of that oversight. Laila, we can have people start on that right away, yes?”

  Laila nodded. “Not a problem.”

  “And,” Carl said, “The fact is …Showing that vid to people back home just might get through to some of those types that there’s limits on what they can do. The Arena’s filled with consequences, and there’s nothing wrong with hammering that home.”

  He did work for someone who raced in a potentially lethal sport; I suppose that gives you an appreciation for the less forgiving aspects of reality. “Obviously, Sangrey, we expect you will mete out appropriate punishment to the perpetrators, by your own standards, but insofar as our official reaction? The Faction of Humanity is willing to simply let it pass, as long as the Faction of Tantimorcan is also willing to let this pass.”

  Sangrey squished himself low to the floor, apparently his equivalent of a bow. “The Faction of Tantimorcan accepts. May this incident be forgotten.”

  “May it be forgotten,” the three of them chorused.

  Once Sangrey had left, Simon turned to the other two. “We do have to make sure this sort of thing cannot happen again.”

  “No argument there,” Carl said. “I found this guy’s file and I can see why he was let in—he’s really good at inventory management, creative, good at leading people in the right circumstances. But he is …was also really good at finding weak places in people’s mental armor and pushing; it was more than a habit, it was an avocation with him.”

  Laila smiled—a cold smile that Simon was rather glad was not directed at him. “Then I suppose he achieved his life’s goal. I would presume that we could get the AIs working on sorting out these people before they come through.”

  “Naturally,” Simon said. “It might be as simple as looking at how many blocking lists an applicant is on. However, I think that will require some more CSF/SSC work. Restricting where people go is not normally permitted when it’s not conflicting with another individual’s rights. I am afraid a lot of our laws are going to have to be revised.”

  “I will send a summary to Thomas Cussler,” Laila said. “It’s really the sort of thing he should be watching for. As you say, we will have to adjust our screening, and perhaps our laws, to deal with this.”

  “And fast,” Carl said, looking more serious. “Trolls are usually just nuisances, but there’s other people who have more sinister motives, especially now. But you’re right, that’s Tom’s and the SSC’s problem; we’ll send ’em our recommendation and let them figure it out. The fact someone’s gotten killed should give them a good kick in the pants to move forward.”

  Simon stretched. “Well, now that that’s settled, I want to get myself some dinner and go to sleep. I feel, as DuQuesne might say, like I have been pulled through a knothole.” The others waved as he left.

  However, now that he’d had to deal with another crisis, he found he wasn’t yet ready to relax. Blast. Well, then, I’ll go out and eat. That should work off the extra nervous energy.

  The Grand Arcade was—as at almost any time—a whirl of scents, sights, and sounds uplifting, dizzying, and, in a way, comforting; here there might be a thousand different species, enemies and victims and allies, and yet they were all here to do things so very much the same—shop, haggle, eat, entertain, gamble. It was here that you could see that in many ways we really were all very much the same.

  Simon found a restaurant that he’d seen before, run by a Daelmokhan. Despite their rather inhuman appearance, the Daelmokhan had biochemistries quite close to that of humans and their restaurants tended to have a large variety of edible, and even quite tasty, selections. Armed with his headware references to make sure he didn’t choose unwisely, he quickly made some selections and sat down.

  Yes, this was the right call, he thought, as he cracked the shell on a creature that looked like an almost spherical crab with circular frondlike appendages on two sides. I can feel myself relaxing. Once I’m done, I know I’ll be able to go to sleep by the time I’m back at the Embassy.

  “Hello, Simon. Would you mind terribly if I could sit down?” said a light, musical voice, a voice with just the perfect undertone of huskiness to make it completely arresting.

  Startled, he glanced up.

  Hair gleaming like spun gold, eyes like pure sapphires, Maria-Susanna looked down at him, smiling, with just a hint of uncertainty that made her look startlingly vulnerable. “Honestly …I need to talk to someone.”

  Chapter 18

  “The idea is tempting, Doctor DuQuesne, but …are you certain it will work?”

  “Not certain. But …say eighty percent chance it’ll work,” DuQuesne answered. “And if it does work, your firepower just went way up.”

  “It will drop if you fail, however,” Orphan pointed out. DuQuesne could tell that the protest was, at least partially, purely from Orphan’s instinctive need to be cautious.

  “You’ll still have the top turret that Simon modified in the first place,” Ariane said. “And from what I saw of that thing in action, you could lose a lot of turrets and still be ahead of where your ship started.”

  A buzzing chuckle accompanied by a handtap was Orphan’s reply. “You indeed have a point, especially since that weapon no longer requires someone to stand in the turret reloading it. And having another such weapon …or three …yes, that is definitely a gamble worth taking.”

  “Three? You wouldn’t want all of them converted?”

  “Alas, I do not have nearly enough channel assembly reloads to reasonably make use of that many. But up to three, yes, I have the supplies to make useful.”

  “Okay, then we’ll get to it. On one condition.”

  “That is …? ”

  “You don’t watch. If I’m right, and I’ve got the secret, I’m not giving it away. Giving you a SAMPLE, yes, but not the technique.”

  The green and black alien chuckled again. “Doctor, I have gone over the one Doctor Sandrisson created many times, and failed to find the secret. If you have that secret, then it is your Faction’s by right. The gain of such weaponry will be more than adequate to salve the complaints of my curiosity.”

  DuQuesne grinned. “Okay, then. C’mon, Ariane, I’ll need your help.”

  Ariane looked puzzled, but nodded. Wu turned to follow them. “Hold off, Wu.”

  True to his training and promise, the Monkey King looked at Ariane. “Do you want me to come?”

  “If I’m not safe with DuQuesne, I’m not safe period. If he doesn’t want you there, he
’ll have a reason.”

  “All right. But I will be even more bored then.”

  “I have an idea, Wu Kung,” Orphan said. “While I now know you were …oh, what was that term I heard one of you humans use …sandbagging, that was it! I know you were sandbagging during our little match, I think some sparring, and perhaps discussion of combat traditions of each others’ civilizations, could reduce your boredom.”

  “Ha!” said Wu, his tail coming up with more interest. “You have a good idea there! All right, while DuQuesne and Ariane waste their time with machines, we will have some fun!”

  “Just don’t have too much fun, Wu,” Ariane said with the smile that often showed up when Wu Kung was around. “We need Orphan in one piece.”

  “Yes, please; I like keeping my limbs intact,” agreed Orphan.

  “No dismembering, agreed,” Wu said with a grin. “But a warning: I think you were sandbagging a little too.”

  DuQuesne saw Ariane’s eyebrows go up. “Really?”

  Orphan looked, somehow, too casually innocent as Wu Kung replied, “Not much, maybe, but he’s the tricky type. I didn’t find out until years later how much Sha Wujing was holding back, and Orphan’s like him. Only with a better sense of humor!”

  “That’s not hard to manage,” DuQuesne said, remembering the grim gray river-ogre from Wu’s home Hyperion world. “Okay, guys, we’ll see you later.” DuQuesne led the way towards the main starboard battery.

  “All right, Marc, can you tell me what my role in this is? I know you’re testing to see if you can do what Simon did, but—”

  “Wait.” DuQuesne took out a handheld scanner and observed its responses carefully; then he set it to give an alarm if anything changed and returned it to his pocket. “Sorry, wanted to double-check that Orphan wasn’t monitoring us. Yes, I probably don’t need help to do this. But no reason to tell him that. He knows Simon did it …somehow. He also knows he can’t figure out how. So if this time it’s two of us (and it works), he’ll have even fewer good clues to go on. As far as I know, aside from the Holy Grail crew, Nyanthus, Mandallon, and Gona-Brashind are the only ones who know what happened at the ritual that sealed your powers, and thus the only ones with even a chance to guess that there’s something strange about Simon. Without that, he’ll be shooting in the dark.”