Tom Paine Maru - Special Author's Edition

by L. Neil Smith

  My thoughts took me unwillingly back to Sca, a full-circle from dungeon to dungeon. It was not the most comfortable of feelings. Over the past few months, I had come to agree with the undisciplined Confederates on at least one point: there is no excuse—ever—for keeping another sapient being in a cage, no matter how he may deserve it.

  Far better to kill him outright.

  Cleaner.

  Elbow-crawling toward Rogers, I kept low as possible behind meager cover, wary of the soldiers posted below. There were six of us, me, Rog, Couper, Lucille, Howell—along with little Elsie—plus the alien who was acting as our guide. We all lay concealed by an outcrop, the Gulf of Dybod behind us at the foot of a sheer, cruel cliff-face. The soggy meadow with its sprinkling of wildflowers, guarded jealously by heavily-armed beings of the same species as our guide, lay before us.

  Everything looked wrong.

  The sky overhead glowed a custardy yellow, cloudlessly clear. The sun on the horizon was the color of dried blood. This would brighten to a dull orange as it rose, bringing local temperatures even higher than the hundred thirty-five degrees Fahrenheit that my instruments attested.

  The water all around—an extension, according to my suit-map, of the “Rommish Ocean”—was a brilliant crimson, owing to a variety of algae with a high red chlorophyll content. This far from the mainland, dense growths of equally-red higher-order plants thrust up through the water’s surface, their stalks calming the waves to an oily languor. It got on my nerves almost as much as the yellow color of the sky, which on my homeworld would have been a warning of rare destructive twisting storms.

  Pink surf pounded on the white sand cliff-base.

  The meadow itself was a riot of reds, oranges, yellows. Anything that offered cover lay in a charred heap to one side of the building, but fresh grass, or something like it, a few low shrubs, told a tale of garrison troops grown lax. Overhead, one of the creatures Elsie had dubbed “whirlybirds” circled, looking for something helpless to pounce on.

  Like every other advanced organism on Sodde Lydfe, it was built on a trilateral symmetry, boasting three large wings, three eyes, even three sexes, just as promised. Sculling itself around its own axis to obtain lift, how it saw where it was going was anybody’s guess. If his went well, Confederate biologists would be scrabbling gleefully over this planet for the next three centuries, asking themselves similar questions.

  Provided the natives did not reduce it to radioactive cinders, first.

  Settling in beside Rogers, I realized that my inquiring expression was not being conveyed by a smartsuit-face camouflaged to resemble rock-grown cactus. Apparently he needed some help adjusting a setting dial on the fist-sized piece of machinery he had brought with him through the down-Broach. It was identical to the object that Lucille had thrown at my feet in the bar. I held it while he tightened a tiny screw.

  Elsie, lying on her stomach, conversed in low tones with Couper who was interrogating our native guide while Howell looked on. As she talked, Elsi played with a small, double-edged knife as casually as she had with her bubble-pipe. Lucille sat up a little higher, keeping watch, a plasma pistol in each hand. I was astonished at the way my attitude had changed toward her. Lucille’s personal problems were fairly easily understood, after all—although not so easily dealt with.

  Somehow, the alien had contrived to meet us in exactly the correct place when we dilated down from orbit. It was my first chance to see one of these “lamviin” up close. The thing stood over a meter tall, much wider than a human, covered with thick, coarse, blondish fur, shading to a darker tone at the extremities. Its pelt rippled as it spoke, making me suspect that this was not an effect of the offshore breeze.

  Each of its eyes, a trio evenly distributed around the inverted bowl-shaped body, was bigger than my hand, dark-irised, protected by a heavy ridge of brow bone. It gazed out from beneath a fringe of furry lashes with calm, unnerving wisdom. An obscenely hairless hemisphere, divided into three saw-toothed sections, formed a mouth atop the alien creature.

  Even more disturbing were its limbs. At the rim of its carapace, spaced between the huge eyes, three heavy “legs” emerged, covered with a camouflage fabric spanning the underside of its body, as well. About halfway down, at the cuff of the garment, each limb split into three more delicate extremities, heavily furred like the rest of the alien, terminating in strong, slim, three-fingered “hands”—or “feet”. It walked on six of whatever you called them, holding the remaining three upward.

  Carrying a large valise made of the same brush-patterned fabric as its clothing, it wore a large handgun in a leather harness strapped to the underside of its carapace. I could see that Rogers itched to get ahold of that weapon. I will admit to some curiosity, myself, not only about the gun, but about the fact that the creature was not an “it” at all, nor a he or a she, but a third sex that human beings do not have. I wondered what pronoun to call it by, also what in the despised name of Voltaire Malaise’s miserable navigator, its biological function was.

  I had learned that it answered to the name of Mymysiir Offe Woom —“Mymy” to its friends. We were here to break its husband out of prison.

  “Okay, here’s the situation,” said Couper as the conference broke up. Crouching, he slid over to where we were finishing adjustments on the bomb-like object. Behind him, Lucille—how odd to think that she had been born on Earth, the birthplace of all mankind—was examining Mymy’s gun, a big three-shot revolver, gray with long use, hard wear. It looked like it used blackpowder cartridges, brass, with big lead bullets.

  “Well, our pigeon’s cooped up down there on the top floor—he’s a Very Important Prisoner, apparently—in a corner cell. They appear to be luxury quarters, considering circumstances, with lots of light, a great view, very dry and warm, the way these people like it. The catch is that he can be reached only through a guard-room. We have to get past the guards. How are you coming along with that stasis-bomb, Rog?”

  The gunsmith looked up, “You know that this is a prototype, Coup. There were only two. Lucille used one on Afdiar, and I’m not sure this one’s going to work. The Heller effect is a pretty iffy proposition at best.”

  Couper assumed the grim expression that he felt most comfortable with. “I want to avoid hurting people if we can, Rog. We’re here to stop the killing, not add to it. Mymy tells us that rher husband is something of a celebrity down there. The guards here treat him like royalty.”

  “A policeman’s lot, and all that.” Howell trotted beside Couper. In his close-fitting coyote-shaped smartsuit, with a pair of small remote controlled pistols fixed to the helmet, he looked like a rubber dog.

  “‘Rher’? Is that the proper word for this whatchamacallit?”

  “Have a care, Whitey old fellow,” admonished Howell. “The lamviin have excellent hearing, albeit their atmosphere is rather thin. They evolved in it, after all. I suspect, as well, that Mymy’s beginning to pick up a modest smattering of English. Rhe’s an exceptionally bright organism.”

  “I’ll second that,” said Couper. “Good tactical sense, too.”

  “Rhe, rher, rhers’,” Howell went on. “Those are the pronouns for the third sex. Mymy’s a nidfemo, a ‘surmale’, the weakest and the smallest of the three lamviin sexes. Although if that’s true, I dread the coming confrontation. Rhe’s quite a formidable being, rherself. Rhe’s also a physician, and has explained to me how their biology works.”

  “Oh?” Rogers asked at the same time I did.

  “No time now,” Howell replied, a malicious expression on the face-piece of his helmet. He turned to look at Couper. “Have we a plan?”

  The big man returned the coyote’s gaze, unrolled the blueprint—it was ochre, actually, with reddish ink—that the alien had given him.

  He shook his head. “If you want to call it that. The only way is through that ground floor arch, with a portcullis either end of the passage. Mymy’s been allowed to visit Mav. He’s been in a couple of years, local time, since th
e war started heating up, so rhe knows the layout.”

  The others joined us.

  “I don’t know what you got me down here for,” said the diminutive xenopsychologist, tucking her dagger away. She patted Mymy between the eyes, “They may look a little strange, but in here, they’re just like us.”

  “Why, thank you kindly, Elsie Nahuatl,” said the alien. I jumped, startled at her—rher—‘command’ of the language, until I realized it was only our smartsuits translating. Had I dared to strip off my helmet, I would have heard the creature speaking Fodduan. “You look a little strange, yourself. And you say that Howell, here, is your father?”

  “More so than most fathers,” the little girl nodded proudly, “I was going to spin you a tall tale about being the larval form of a coyote, but the absolute truth is that I was a contract-baby, constructed especially to order, gene by gene, so he could have a daughter.”

  Mymy said, “I believe that may be illegal in Great Foddu.” Rhe glanced down at the map, pointing to the center, “There is the courtyard.”

  “In fact, the place is little more than three walls about an exercise yard. ’Round the inside, as you may observe on the outside, as well, there is provided a walkway upon each floor, the salient difference being that, inside, these are connected by flights of stairs.”

  Mymy’s voice seemed to emanate from small dilating orifices either side of rher leg where it joined rher dome-shaped body. I could hear rher breathe between phrases. Rher mouth, sort of a flattened beak, had nothing to do with respiration. In essence, rhe talked through rher nostrils.

  “We have two choices,” rhe observed. “Entering the archway at the front, passing through both iron gates, up two flights to the second floor, through the guard-room and into my husband’s cell—or scaling the outer wall straight to the third floor to pass through the same guardpost.”

  “Not much of a choice,” said Elsie. Lucille was being unusually quiet, I thought. I couldn’t blame her. She had once died here, after all.

  “In any event,” Mymy went on, “we shall have to contend with at least an octary of guards assigned to scarcely half again that number of prisoners.” Rhe shook rher carpet-bag in emphasis, laid another hand on rher revolver. This left a third hand, with which rhe pointed angrily at the fortress below. “Positively scandalous, that’s what it is!”

  “What is an octary?” I asked, watching the alien in amazement.

  “Eighty-one,” Lucille answered for her. “Nine-times-nine. It’s the one hundred in their base-nine numerical system. Any more stupid questions?”

  “Sure.” I refrained from the sarcastic remark that crossed my mind about numbers—or calendars, “We are supposed to get in there past eighty-one guards (or is it a hundred?), then climb three floors past professional opposition, without hurting anybody? Why did we bother coming?”

  Couper laid a hand on my shoulder. “Just do your best. I never said you couldn’t defend yourself. We’ve got the stasis-bomb. That’s what we’ll use in the courtyard. What radius have you set it for, Rog?”

  The gunsmith was disgusted. “The marks on the case say a hundred yards. I haven’t any idea how truthful they are. How’re we gonna play this?”

  Couper gathered us all around him, like a kickyball coach, even laying a brotherly hand on Mymy’s furry carapace. “Well, here’s my plan ...”

  -2-

  There had not been any point to our waiting until sundown, after all. Three moons rose, almost simultaneously, flooding the marshy meadow with the reddish reflected light of the Sodde Lydfen sun. You could have read by their glow, if Confederates had ever acquired such a habit. Each of us lay, face down, at the dry edge of the field, our smartsuits telling lies to any eyes that happened to wander their direction.

  Suddenly Howell jumped up, his smartsuit suit turning—at Mymy’s suggestion—a brilliant lime green, a color that never occurs in nature on this yellow-red-orange planet. At something in excess of forty kilometers an hour, he rushed, yapping loudly in the evening stillness, toward the open portcullis of the prison archway. Couper followed, more slowly, the Heller Effect bomb in one hand, ready to throw.

  Mymy ran with Rogers, behind Couper, while Elsie and I followed Lucille with a different task in mind. We angled off toward another wall, hoping the diversion would distract the guards’ attention from us. The whole idea was to keep little Elsie from getting shot at, not because she was only nine years old—Confederates simply do not look at things that way—but because she was physically small, could not run as fast as the rest of us. Also, despite her frequent and modest disclaimers on the subject, she was the only expert we had on alien psychology.

  From the corner of my eye, I watched the other group converge on the entrance. Howell was already inside, now, making noise enough to raise the dead. The guards inside would be shocked, never having seen or heard anything like a coyote before. The fact that he ran on four legs was enough to make him a monster. In that color they probably thought he was some kind of demon from whatever hell they believed in here.

  No one on the planet knew we were here except Mymy, plus whoever rhe talked to via their underground radio network. It was that station—plus half a hundred more like it, planetwide—that had called Confederate attention to the enormous antiwar movement we were now attempting to aid. Not even Agot Edmoot Mav, rher husband, suspected he was about to be rescued, by aliens, at that. Life on other planets was still a speculative concept here, the subject of fiction or fairy tales.

  Wait until they saw a killer whale!

  Lucille reached the wall ahead of me, began to climb the rough stone toward the catwalk overhead. I still found it odd that many of the cells, on all three floors, had doors connecting directly with the outside of the prison. Lucille would likely reach Mav’s cell ahead of everybody.

  Responsible for Elsie’s safety, I certainly could not climb the same way. I started the little girl up, then began following her, when a bullet zinged past us, striking the stone wall at a shallow angle. I glanced up, flattening myself against the triangular stones, saw a lamviin arm with a large automatic pistol, taking aim again from the guardpost corner. I drew my own pistol, fired three shots. The arm withdrew.

  More gunshots rang out, most of them from overhead.

  “Whitey!” Lucille shouted, “This isn’t working! Shit!”

  She had slipped, one smartsuit-covered leg thrusting down between the widely-spaced slats of the second-floor catwalk. Now I understood their purpose: they allowed plenty of room for the guards to aim and shoot through; they were also almost unnegotiable, in a hurry, by human or lamviin feet. Still only a meter or so above the ground-level, trying to shield Elsie’s body with my own, I clung to the wall, returning fire to the second-floor corner guardpost, nearly getting myself caught in crossfire between two posts on the ground level corners.

  “Keep climbing!” I shouted at Lucille, “I have an idea!”

  Tucking our miniature xenopsychologist behind me, I dropped back to the ground, stepped to the door of the nearest cell, fired point blank at the clumsy brass padlock keeping it shut. The tortured metal bent, shattered. I threw the door open, gesturing at the blinking creature inside.

  “Come on out, friend, you are free to go!”

  I was shocked when the lamviin in the cell picked up what looked to me like a wooden stool. I was shocked even more when he (she, rhe) threw it at me. I could see now why Fodduan prisons were constructed so much differently from Vespuccian ones. Apparently nobody wanted to escape. Ducking, I ran to the next cell, to blow the lock off that door.

  Before I could open it, hot lead came whisking through the air from the other corner. Elsie suddenly fired three or four shots. I heard a scream—she must have connected with a careless trio of fingers—then kicked the cell door in. Its occupant, a rather small non-Fodduan lamviin, to judge from the reddish-black color of his fur, dashed outside, nearly knocking me over, began running across the meadow.

  Little spurts of dust,
water, or turf followed him as the guards reacted.

  That was more like it!