McClendon's Syndrome (v1.1)

by Robert Frezza

  “Catarina had more than one hand in the decision. I’d like to think she decided I was a little better suited for the job than anyone else,” I said modestly, looking at her and daring her to contradict me.

  The corner of Catarina’s mouth dipped slightly. “We have an old saying, ‘In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.’ “

  “Do you, really?!” Bucky exclaimed eagerly. “That is uncanny! We have almost the exact same expression in our lovely language. Let me see, it translates as, ‘In the country of the witless, the half-wit is crowned.’ “

  I said, “Thank you, Bucky, for sharing that with me.”

  “Bucky, speaking of kings, I’ve been meaning to ask you, just what is your father’s title?” Catarina asked.

  “Oh, I suppose that you would translate it as ‘the Poobah,’ “ Bucky said airily.

  I exchanged looks with Catarina. “The Poobah?”

  “Yes. It is queer that you should ask. When I was very young and first began studying your speech, I asked my grandfather that very question, and he told me that he had selected ‘Poobah’ as the best approximation. Very impressive-sounding, is it not?”

  “Yes, “I allowed.

  Bucky finished off the last crumbs of his roti and twitched his whiskers. “Strange, my grandfather said something at the time that I didn’t understand. He said that he wanted a translation that would not unsettle humans, and that ‘Poobah’ sounded friendlier than the other choices he considered. Can you imagine?”

  Catarina managed a nod.

  “A fascinating topic.” Bucky stood up from his bed and dusted off his paws. “But, having dined, I must perform my ablutions. Friends, I shall return momentarily.”

  As soon as I heard the shower running, I glanced at Catarina. “I’m just glad the old boy’s dead. Otherwise we’d probably be speaking Rodent.”

  Beaver came back in a few minutes later, dripping water. “Has anyone seen my blow-dryer?”

  A wet Rodent smells like a couple of wet Labrador retrievers, and the vents on the Scupper weren’t designed to handle the load. My stomach did flips, and Catarina turned two shades paler than pale.

  “Ah, no,” I said, “but we haven’t eaten yet, and I’m afraid we really must go.”

  “How regrettable,” Bucky lamented. “Until tomorrow!”

  Catarina decided to skip supper and call it a night. As we paused by her door, she gave my hand a quick squeeze. “A small coin for your thoughts.”

  “I’m just wondering if there’s some tactical wrinkle that we haven’t thought of,” I said, lying through my teeth.

  “I put in a suggestion box in case somebody had an idea.”

  “And?”

  She shrugged. “Somebody suggested installing a pasta bar.” She gave my hand another squeeze and disappeared.

  I quieted the queasy feeling in my stomach with some fruit and called it quits a little later. As I crawled into bed, it occurred to me that it had been at least a week since somebody had tried to kill me. Then I heard footsteps outside my door, which I’d forgotten to lock.

  About the only thing that somebody hadn’t tried was the direct approach—machine-gunning me in my bunk.

  I rolled out, landed chest-down on the floor, and scooted into the storage space underneath my bed. Then I remembered I was hiding underneath a waterbed, which probably meant I’d drown if somebody did spray the room with lead.

  “Damn,” I mumbled to myself as the door opened.

  Clyde stepped inside. He slowly drew Harry’s pistol. “Sir? Where are you?” Then he spotted me and bolstered the gun. Curiosity got the better of him. “Sir, Lieutenant Lindquist asked me to look in on you. What are you doing down there?”

  I thought for a second. “The mattress was too hard.”

  He gave me a funny look. “It’s a waterbed.”

  “Hard water.” It dawned on me that if anybody aboard did mean me harm, they’d at least wait until the Rodents had a shot at it.

  “Sir, are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Just fine, Clyde.”

  “Well,” Clyde said, shaking his head, “have a good night, sir.”

  The next morning while I was shaving, I remembered that McHugh’s half coin was still hidden behind my mirror. A little sheepish, I fished it out and stuck it in my pocket to return.

  Before we started practice, Hiro, Catarina, and I called Piper to check on her status.

  “We’re doing fine over here,” Piper explained. “Kimball hogs the bathroom every morning, but otherwise everything’s running smoothly.”

  “Have you encountered any problems?” Hiro inquired.

  “I let Trujillo and Sin split an extra roti every time they rack up ten hits in practice, sir,” Piper said jauntily. “If Genghis doesn’t show up on schedule, we may need an emergency resupply. Signing off!”

  I turned to Catarina and Hiro. “How’s our gunnery practice going?”

  Catarina increased the volume on the intercom.

  “Take that, you weasel! How’d you like another dose of hot lead! Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!”

  “Harry, why don’t you let Dinky take the next simulated launch?” Catarina directed.

  “Ah, I’m hit, men!” Harry shouted. “They got me! I can’t see! Dinky, you take over for me!”

  “Voyage of the Damned,” McHugh muttered loudly.

  Hiro’s face indicated great pain. I couldn’t make out what he was saying to himself, but it had something to do with “reservists.”

  “Maybe we should keep practising until we get it right,” Dinky said mildly.

  McHugh grunted. “I’m glad I didn’t make plans for Christmas.”

  “Before you practice manoeuvring, we should contact Bunkie,” Hiro told Catarina with his eyes still closed.

  Bunkie filled us in on the latest news. “Sir, there are a few small problems now that people are starting to realise that Genghis is due tomorrow.” She was trying to make it as palatable as possible. “Somebody started a rumour that the brewery in town was going to cut back to one shift, so there was some rioting until things got sorted out.”

  “Any new lawsuits?” I asked.

  “Just one, sir,” Bunkie explained. “The Associated Civil Liberties Union filed, requesting an injunction against any Rodent invasion.”

  “Oh?” I said. “That’s interesting.”

  “They voted two-to-one to file the suit. I understand the woman who got outvoted quit, and they’re looking for new members. I think they got disconcerted when I leaked the news about the firepower the Rodent cruiser was packing and the betting line against us hit fifty-to-one. They pretty much said at the press conference that as long as they had a lawsuit against us and a lawsuit against the Rodents, they had their bread buttered both ways.”

  “Why the sudden change of heart?” Catarina asked mischievously.

  “Off the record, ma’am, downtrodden, underprivileged aliens stop being downtrodden and underprivileged when they land in your neighbourhood and start running down property values. One more item: the legislature scraped together a quorum and passed a nonbinding resolution condemning the Rodent invasion and asking us to peacefully disarm them.”

  “When we finally get hold of Cheeves and start rattling the skeletons in his closet, I expect a few of the local politicians to fall out,” Catarina commented. “Thanks, Bunkie. Let us know if there are any new developments.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bunkie said. She looked at all of us. “Best of luck.”

  With a couple of breaks, we spent the next eight hours practising tight turns without having too many breakdowns. I got a better feel for what Catarina was trying to accomplish, no pun intended, and Catarina got a better handle on the Scupper’s more obvious quirks and shortcomings.

  After dinner, I hunted up McHugh and gave her back her coin. “Annalee, I found this a while ago, and I think it belongs to you. I forgot I had it. Souvenir?”

  “Sort of. It’s my good-luck piece. Fat lot of good it�
�s going to do me now.” She looked at me directly. “I wish I had sense enough to hop into the lifeboat and get the hell out of here. But I just can’t shake six years in the navy.”

  “I guess it affects us all that way,” I said lamely.

  I left her kicking the bulkhead, saying, “I’m stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

  I headed off to Bucky’s room to help Catarina, Clyde, and Harry teach Bucky how to play poker. To shorten a long story, we taught Bucky how to play, and I acquired a great deal of sympathy and a smidgen of respect for the Contact boys. The only thing that saved us was the fact that he wagged his tail whenever he got a particularly good hand.

  I also spoke to Clyde about Wyma Jean. Catarina had originally billeted Clyde in Rosalee’s cubicle, but when Rosalee had changed her mind and joined us, she bumped Clyde back into Frido’s old cabin. That made the common area between Spooner’s room and Clyde’s room the second minefield in the star system, and Clyde was a little wistful about it.

  “It still bothers you, doesn’t it?”

  “Well, yes,” he admitted. He grinned. “But, as Bucky says, ‘I worried about whether my shoes matched until I realised I wasn’t wearing any.’ “

  “I gather that I’m not the first person to give you a little pep talk.”

  “No, sir. You’re the fourth.”

  After I left Clyde, Catarina and I sat on the sofa in our common area and turned on the TV to catch the news from the two Schenectady stations.

  Channel 1 was running a special on “Military Unpreparedness and Expensive Weapons that Don’t Work.” It turned out to be one of those balanced discussions of the AN-33 missile system where they find the one guy in the universe who thinks that the thing is a complete piece of junk and cut to him every five seconds.

  Channel 2 had a roundtable discussion of the invasion, which was kind of interesting. One woman called for a peace vigil in the hope that we would turn the ploughshares we were going to fight with back into ploughshares, while somebody from the Keep Schuyler’s World White, Black, and Yellow Committee called on us to whip the Rats back to their holes and carry the war to total victory on !Plixxi* by Saturday noon at the latest.

  Then we talked until I fell asleep. Unfortunately, I didn’t stay asleep long. Catarina shook me awake.

  “Let me go back sleep. Tell Genghis I surrender,” I mumbled.

  “Ken, Bunkie’s on the line. We have real problems. Lydia Dare got the California Kid to talk. She knows where we planted the minefield, and she knows about the launcher in the space station. She’s planning on breaking the story live tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s freedom of the press for you—you can’t hide anything from them.” I figuratively scratched my head. “Wait a minute, is she going to try and broadcast this before Genghis shows up?”

  “Genghis is going to get a detailed, slashing, no-holds-barred exposé of what passes for our battle plan,” Catarina said grimly.

  “Well, we just have to tell her not to run the story,” I said.

  She stared at me. “Ken, are you awake yet?”

  “Ah, right.” I made a battlefield retreat. “We can tell her to delay running the story.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t the one who’s thinking about entering a convent?” Catarina shook her head. “Come on, we have to find Commander Hiro.”

  Clyde and Bucky joined us as we assembled in Hiro’s bedroom. After Clyde explained the problem, Hiro asked, “Are we certain that the Rodents will be listening in?”

  “Even if they’re not monitoring, Lydia wants to interview Genghis, so she’s planning on broadcasting the segment live from Genghis’s flagship,” Catarina explained. “If we don’t stop her, we’re going to have to take our chances on surviving the trip to Brasilia Nuevo. Once Lydia spills her guts, our chances of doing significant damage to Genghis drop from pitiful to non-existent.” Frustration lined her face.

  Hiro adjusted his nightcap. “This complicates matters. Does anyone have any suggestions?”

  “What if we launched a commando raid and took her prisoner?” Clyde suggested.

  “I don’t know,” I reflected, recalling my previous encounters with Dare. “It would be tough to gag her. Couldn’t we just shoot her instead?”

  “We’d pretty much have to strip the ship to pull off a raid, and we’re short on time to plan and execute it properly,” Catarina pointed out.

  “Could we fire a missile at her?” Hiro asked hopefully.

  “No good,” Catarina said. “It would take at least a couple of days to modify our ship-to-ship missiles to hit ground targets.”

  “There might also be adverse publicity,” Bucky added thoughtfully.

  “What if we simply order her not to make the broadcast?” Clyde asked.

  Catarina formed a crooked smile. “That’s prior restraint of free speech, and we’re talking about a reporter. We’d have less trouble with the courts if we simply shot her.”

  “We’ve got to keep her out of the newsroom tomorrow,” I said, thinking aloud. “The only way to do that would be to dangle an even bigger story in front of her nose.”

  “Keep going, Ken, you’re on a roll,” Catarina said.

  “I am? Somebody help me out.”

  “I think that it is very newsworthy that one of my officers is a vampire,” Hiro said unexpectedly.

  “ ‘Vamp Leads Navy into Battle.’ Sir, I like it,” Clyde said.

  “Clyde, go pull out a copy of my report and delete all the names,” Catarina directed. “That’ll keep Dare busy for hours trying to figure out who is who. How do we plant it on her?”

  That was my cue. “That, my dear Lieutenant Lindquist, is a job for professionals. I’ve got just the guys in mind.”

  After we arranged the details with Bunkie and sent her the edited version of Catarina’s report, I called Jamali and told him I was dropping the charges against Joe and Larry.

  “Why should I release them?” he questioned, stroking his beard, “and why do you always bother me in the middle of the night?”

  “Sheriff, it’s a harebrained scheme to keep the long arm of the news from complicating operations tomorrow.” I shrugged. “As for calling you in the middle of the night, it’s probably force of habit.”

  “All right, in the interests of what I presume is planetary security I shall do so, on one condition. If your scheme works, I want you to call me—in the afternoon—and give me the details to cherish the next time Lydia abuses me in print.”

  “Done,” I said promptly.

  The next step was to explain the terms and conditions of their release to Joe and Larry.

  “Here’s the deal,” I told them. “Tomorrow morning, you go over to Clyde’s apartment at eight o’clock sharp. You’ve got the address, and the key will be in the door. You call Lydia and tell her she’s got to meet you there in person at eight-thirty to do the deal. Now on the computer in there will be a read-only copy of an official report. You can’t print it out, you can’t copy it, and it will vanish like smoke if you try. That means you’ve got to negotiate price with Lydia before she reads it all, otherwise you’ve got nothing to sell her, comprende?”

  “Why does he sound like he’s selling us a used car?” Larry complained.

  “Quiet!” Joe said as he tried to get his notes straight. “How did we get this stuff again?”

  “When you kidnapped me, you found the key and a computer file access code in my pocket, and you figured that it was something big,” I explained patiently.

  “Oh. Right!”

  “Now, you’re going to tell Lydia that this is the official classified report of events aboard Rustam’s Slipper. You’re going to tell her it’s proof that one person on board the ship is a vampire. I get the first thousand she pays you and half of anything you make over a thousand, so make sure you see the colour of her money before she reads it. And keep her there a while dickering or she’ll get suspicious. I’ll contact you later about paying me my share.” I crossed my fingers. �
�Any questions?”

  “I still want to know why you can’t sell this to her directly,” Larry said.

  “He works for the government, dummy!” Joe’s indignation boiled over. “Dare is never going to believe something like this coming from him. She’s a reporter! That’s why he needs us!” He sounded happy. He had obviously figured out what he was going to do with my share. “It’s free money!”

  “Well, jeez, I was only asking,” Larry said. “I mean, it just seems a little odd that some reporter’s going to believe a couple of small-time crooks like us instead of some high-powered navy guy-”

  I shrugged. “You got to play every game by the rules.”

  After they had the details straight, I signed off.

  It seemed a little incongruous that the fate of human civilisation—at least my share of it—depended on whether a couple of petty hoods remembered to get up on time, but if it came with a night’s sleep attached, I wasn’t going to argue.

  As I went to bed, one of Piper’s lost little microrobots came wandering out from under my desk on six tiny legs like miniature paper clips. It waved its sensors at me to see if my wiring was shorted. “Do you have days like this, too?” I asked it.

  In the words of General Custer,

  “Will You Look At All Those Indians!”

  While Cheeves had told us what day Genghis was planning on arriving, he hadn’t told us what time, so Catarina woke me early enough to attend to a lot of last-minute details.

  The first thing on my list was to put Spooner on board the shuttle. Clyde thought she was in the galley. It turned out she was—locked in a passionate embrace with Harry.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but we’re real pressed for time here, Wyma Jean.”

  “Oh, ah, sure,” Spooner said, a little flushed.

  “Ken, this isn’t what you think,” Harry said, zipping his coveralls a little tighter.