Tom Paine Maru - Special Author's Edition

by L. Neil Smith

  No such method exists—or supposedly can exist. All right, then, reasoned the Gunjj, why not work it backward? If a ship departed the Gunjj home world, headed for Colony A (the Gunjj did not actually establish colonies—no one knew why), despite the fact its velocity can be measured, plus the distance between the two points is known, there is no guarantee it will arrive at any specifically given time. Such would imply a synchronicity that physics holds to be impossible, nonsensical.

  Suppose the voyage is supposed to take a hundred years. It makes as much sense, from this abstruse standpoint, for the traveler to arrive a hundred thousand years after takeoff, or a hundred million. Likewise, a mere hundred seconds, or nanoseconds is equally logical, accomplishing, in effect, travel vastly faster than the speed of light.

  Except that Gunjj ships have no actual velocity. Their transition between two points, for all practical purposes, is instantaneous. Thus obvious, widespread traces of their planetary explorations everywhere one looked, while at the same time (not speaking scientifically, of course) no Confederate had ever encountered any of their ships in flight.

  Until Tom Smothers Maru.

  All intelligent life, no matter how different in appearance, will be psychologically similar. Young Gunjj, no different from humans or chimpanzees, liked to have their fun, particularly at the expense of nominal superiors. Everyone is nominally superior to a midshipman cadet.

  Thus another principle of physics was brought into play. The Gunjj nonsimultaneity drive could not be used immediately upon leaving a planet. Something about the gravity fields. Neither was it actually instantaneous. (Although how anyone could actually testify to that is a question.) As a joke, half of the midshipman class aboard the Disgruntled arranged to calculate, to twenty-three decimals, their velocity during transition. They performed all of the calculations but one, ready for the last read-out at the tentacle-squish of a computer-button.

  Meanwhile, the remaining half of the Gunjj midshipman class was equally prepared to state, with similar precision, the Disgruntled’s location.

  Unfortunately, Werner Heisenberg—along with his equivalent in the culture of the Gunjj—says you cannot do this. You can either know, with great precision, the velocity of a particle (or a ship) or its location. Not both at the same time. The ship took off, exceeded the necessary number of planetary diameters for her transition across the galaxy, prepared to go hyper—then two buttons were pushed. The ship froze dead in space where she was found, full of frightened midshipgunjj.

  They had been there for almost a decade when Tom Swift Maru had discovered them, a handful of grownup officers with a hundred overaged cadets. Naturally, they were highly grateful to have been discovered. Koko puzzled over the problem, then consulted with Rogers, who had a chat with Howell. Learning the Gunjj language, with some computer assistance, they found that, as cultures go, these odd aliens were very shy. They would never have contacted the Confederacy, left to themselves.

  But they made a wonderful, highly salable brandy. Their discovery of chocolate, thanks to the crew of Tom Swift Maru, was practically a religious experience for them. There would be future contact, with trade.

  It was Howell who, knowing little of physics, but plenty about logic, hit upon the solution. The Gunjj vessel was latched onto—a bit of a strain for a little ship like Tom Swift Maru—then towed away toward a random destination at a carefully uncalculated velocity. Of course they vanished in a wink, resuming what was supposed to have been their instantaneous voyage to wherever it was they had been going.

  -3-

  “Do you actually expect us to believe this blatant nincompoopery?” the Lieutenant asked irritably, when Rogers appeared to finish his story.

  “Oh, Lieutenant Sermander. Glad to see you’re with us again.” Rogers laughed. “No, I don’t expect you to believe it, Nobody else does.”

  “Excuse me, Rog” I said, beginning to notice that the shooting was over. There were no more supervirus visible on the screen. Ships had begun returning to the mother vessel, including Little Tom. “I do not understand how this Howell creature’s idea was a solution to anything. Did it not simply render the Gunjj more lost than to begin with?”

  Rogers laughed again. I noticed that the others, relaxing now from their battle posture, were standing by to watch us take the punchline. “But Whitey, they were never lost. They were the least-lost travelers in history, which, of course, was their problem. Howell’s solution worked because it restored the Heisenbergian uncertainty they needed to travel. They were no longer caught on the horns of a metaphysical contradiction. They were able to move, after ten years of being frozen there.”

  I blinked stupidly. Then it occurred to me to ask, “Did anybody ever find out what their symbol—the ‘Gunjj’ marking— really meant?”

  This, apparently, was what the praxeologist had been waiting for. He looked about the room, making sure that everybody appreciated it properly. “Sure they did, Whitey. It turned out to be not much of a mystery at all. It meant nothing, more or less, than ‘Kilroy was here’!”

  At least the Confederates all enjoyed a good laugh. Kilroy again. Who in Hamilton’s Holy Name was this Kilroy? The Lieutenant, rising from the floor with a weary look, scratched his head, but said nothing.

  I said nothing, but scratched my head.

  “Don’t let it get to you,” Couper grinned, then gave Rogers a dirty look. “I never could decide, myself, about that story, although Howell backs it up. I’ve never known him to be a liar—hold on, elevator going up!” The floor began rising, taking us nearer the phony stars. It required courage not to hunch claustrophobically as the ceiling approached. Then we were through, presumably the hull of Little Tom as well, standing in the mother ship above the docking bay.

  “Welcome aboard TPM3C—informally known as Tom Lehrer Maru!”

  I stared, mouth agape. The source of this welcoming female voice seemed to be half animal, half machine, a sort of man-sized legless lizard wearing a smartsuit, its own exposed rubbery gray-black skin surrounding a pair of wise brown eyes above a roguish, protruberant muzzle. The creature rested in the gleaming frame of a four-wheeled conveyance, mechanical hands responding to her wishes as she greeted us.

  “Armorer-Corporal Whitey O’Thraight, Lieutenant Enson Sermander: I am LeeLaLee Aukorkauk S’reen. Kindly consider yourself at home, good landlings, we dock with our own mother-vessel in six and one-half hours.”

  ***********************

  PART TWO

  The Privateers

  ***********************

  The garden of leelalee

  In the gray salt marshes of the Vespuccian Low Desert, there live certain rare, minuscule, fin-scaly creatures without legs, breathing water instead of air. A porpoise is something like that, but it is bigger, uses lungs like human beings, pointedly claims possession of a mind, as well as a central nervous-system more subtly complex than any human’s. It also considers itself the hottest space pilot in the Known Galaxy.

  I was not certain, at the start, which of these quirks was true of porpoises in general, which peculiar to LeeLaLee Aukorkauk S’reen. She was the only porpoise I had ever met. It was equally true that only six-plus hours were not going to be enough to get well acquainted, even if I had wanted to. It was not really time enough to absorb anything.

  Around us, people (here I use the term as loosely as they did, themselves, taking into consideration the variety of finned or furry folk within eye’s reach) were busily rising or sinking through the floor of what appeared to be a broad green shallow valley. The virus attack seemed to have generated some urgency or excitement among them, which I thought was natural enough. I recalled the damage I had seen being done to this ship by the creatures, wondering what its condition was.

  It was difficult to say. From wall to unseen wall, a thick carpet of vegetation lay before us, randomly punctuated with trees, sometimes sparsely, often in thick copses interwoven with a complicated network of brightly-colored rubber footpaths.
Also fin-paths, as I was to discover. If there was appreciable battle-damage, it was not in these quarters.

  Lost to everything, to everybody else, the Lieutenant stood where the deck extruded him, deep in thought. Or culture-shock. By default, the task of carrying his luggage with my own was delegated to the lowest-ranking representative of the Vespuccian State present at the time.

  Couper smothered my hand in his own giant paw. “I’m afraid I’ve got some chores waiting. Have a good time, son, take a sightseeing tour. We’ll round you up when it’s time to transship again, right, Rog?”

  “I’ll take care of it.” The praxeologist hiked a big shoulder-bag closer to his chest, shook my hand when Couper had released it, then clapped me on the back. “Hoist a couple for me. We’ll see you in a few.”

  They turned their polite attention to my superior, all of them but Lucille. She looked at me as if she were seeing me for the first time, a puzzled expression on her pretty face. Then she shrugged, shook her head ironically, took a step in my direction. I barely avoided the reflex to shrink away from the tense ferocity she always carried with her.

  She stood briefly on her tiptoes, to brush her lips across mine. “That oughta hold you for a few hours, Corporal, until we get the fire put out.” There was a sharp nip at the end of that semi-kiss she gave me, rather painfully, on the lower lip. It throbbed for a long time afterward.

  It was not the only thing that throbbed.

  As the company from the Little Tom dispersed, we Vespuccians followed the porpoise LeeLaLee, at her suggestion, walking briskly behind her shiny mechanical trundler. I did not even think to ask her where we were going, being a bit worried about the Lieutenant, who had not yet said a single word. He had to be nudged before he started moving.

  “What? Oh ... yes ... let us go, by all means. There is a good fellow.” Immediately he fell silent again. I was more than a little dazed, myself, but this had more to do with the tiny blood-blister forming on my lower lip than with any scenic wonders the Tom Lehrer Maru might have offered. Lucille was a girl who believed in fighting a fire by starting others, elsewhere. Nonetheless, I made admiring noises at what seemed to be the right places. It seemed the politest thing.

  “How very gratifying it is, young landling,” The porpoise pointed one of her spindly metal manipulators at some object of interest, “I am extremely fond of this vessel myself—and do not like having her attacked—albeit she is merely the material consequence of certain gross human and simian manipulatory capabilities that a kind evolution seems to have bestowed upon them, in lieu of truly adequate cognitive faculties.”

  I did not follow half of what she said, but was aware that it was not particularly nice. “However in plain truth, if you wish to be impressed,” she went on, “wait until you see the ship we’re about to meet!”

  LeeLaLee’s wheeled contrivance began to slow as it approached the bank of a narrow canal that paralleled the footpath. I stopped right behind her, then had to take the Lieutenant by the elbow until he halted, as well. The man looked up at me blankly, blinked down at the swift current that he had nearly stepped into, then returned to his thoughts.

  In one respect, I was impressed. Unlike Little Tom, no one was rising or sinking through the ceiling here. It may have been fifty or a hundred meters high, difficult to tell in the mist-diffused glare. LeeLaLee steered her gleaming contraption down into the water. With a gleeful splash! she left it, then continued by swimming along beside us.

  Occasionally the pathway would dip or the canal would rise, then her sleek form would be visible through a transparent retaining-wall. In some places, usually encompassed by privacy-creating leafy bowers, there would be a table with chairs, set on the synthetic flagging before the water-windows. “Landlings” conversed with porpoises through the glass, the inevitable topic being the combat action that had just occurred. There did not seem to be much concern for the safety of the ship or of its complement, rather the atmosphere resembled a break in the ordinary routine, a holiday of sorts. I would attempt to remember that, the next time I found myself cowering in a foxhole in somebody’s carpet.

  Some distance ahead, I could make out a complicated double looped figure-eight, where several converging footpaths suddenly vaulted over the water. Unbelievably, a transparent aqueduct arched over them, in turn.

  Meanwhile, sharing the overhead with the birds, many chimpanzees, humans, other bipedal sentients less clearly discernble, hung from fabric-covered wings, swooping, soaring, kicking at the treetops with laughter. Occasionally a land-dweller, plastic extensions on his hands or feet, a large lens on his face, would meet LeeLaLee in the canal, nod, pass her by. This seemed equitable: not every marine being we observed had abandoned its wheels. I had to dodge several on the footpath, pulling the Lieutenant out of harm’s way before he was run down.

  Finally we reached the rim of the vast park-like chamber, almost needing the reminder of familiar oval-doorwayed bulkheads that we were inside a gigantic starship, moving through space at incomprehensible velocities.

  I said something about this to LeeLaLee.

  “You’d remember, my fine shore-grubber, were we not moving!” the Captain observed as she swam into a waiting set of wheels to join us on the walk. “Each precious drop of water, every clod of carefully-cultured soil, would be swirling overhead in a muddy maelstrom, did we not allow a calculated inefficiency in the inertialess field, enough uncorrected acceleration to give us one-half of a gee, if that means anything.”

  Walking around the garden perimeter, now, I looked at storefronts, cafes, other shops with fancy, interesting window displays. Was this a spacecraft or a shopping-center? Experimentally, I bounced a little on the balls of my smartsuit-shod feet. “The gravity feels about right to me, Captain.” Among its other virtues, dense-cored Sca was a great place for the development of bad backs, fallen arches. “Which would be closer to your own standard,” I asked her without thinking, “Sca or Vespucci?”

  “How would the creature know?” The Lieutenant’s derisive snort caught me by surprise. “It has not been anywhere near either planet.” He gave the porpoise a look of apologetic embarrassment, “Enlisted people!”

  LeeLaLee’s wire-spoked wheels rolled nearer, leaving diamond-patterned tracks on the tile that vanished quickly in the warm, dry atmosphere. “On the contrary, pompous officer, this Sca where you were found falls within three decimal places of possessing an Earth-like gravity. Your own—Vespucci? You actually call it that?—appears to be a rather small, tired world, of approximately seven tenths standard.”

  The Lieutenant stared at her in astonishment. “But how could you possibly—”

  “How could I possibly? Because I make it my business to know these things, Lieutenant.” She fell silent, then: “After all, I am the Captain.”

  Now there was an answer that made sense to the Lieutenant. He shut up again. We three continued along the esplanade, looking into shop windows.

  -2-

  “How are we supposed to pay for this?”

  LeeLaLee had left us at a colorful open-fronted restaurant nestled in a shop-cluster at the margin of the park. Where we were seated, we could gaze out over the landscaping or into a rippling blue-green tunnel courtesy of a transparent canal-wall passing directly through the cafe. Both thoroughfares bustled with passers-by of a half a dozen species.

  The waiter was a short, wiry, bald-headed human male attired in a dark green two-tone pin-striped smartsuit that might have nauseated even Owen Rogers. He rolled his eyes ceilingward a moment as if for divine inspiration. “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. It says here you’re on a Survey Service account. Funny, you ginks don’t look like no Survey rowdies. Where’d y’get them fancy suit-patterns, anyway?”

  He indicated our Vespuccian Navy Reserve markings.

  I opened my mouth, but the Lieutenant held up a hand. “I believe, sir, that we are specimens. Now tell me: does one choose a white wine with this repast, or a red?” I wanted to ask him ho
w he suddenly knew that two strangers who had just walked into his establishment were on an account of any kind. Also, who was he to talk about funny suit-patterns?

  He goggled at the Lieutenant’s inquiry. “With lobsterburgers? How ’bout a Coke, buddy? It’s the real thing, y’know. Fresh shipment today all the way from New Atlanta. A very good month.” He busied himself at a fountain tap. “Specimens, are you? Thought those came in a bottle, too.”