by Tom Holt
Her brother was counting his limbs. “I think so.”
“What happened?”
Her brother stood up and leaned against a console. “That octopus was definitely off,” he said. “I told you it smelled funny, but you wouldn’t—”
“Where’s the human?”
Her brother frowned at her. “He’s not coming.”
“Not…?”
A monitor just to her right switched itself on with a crackle of static. Are you there?
The male grinned feebly. “More or less,” he said. “How about you? Are you…?”
> Oh, I’m fine. In a sense. A bit parsed, but otherwise grammatically sound.
“Do you want me to try and bring you up?”
> No, don’t do that. Sorry, didn’t mean to shout. Really, I’m fine, but I think I’ll just stay here for a bit. Have a rest, get my syntax back. You two carry on.
The female looked at her brother. “What’s the matter with him?”
He took a deep breath. “I think it was a bit more intense than he thought it’d be,” he replied. “The last I saw of him, his right arm had sort of been pulled into the screen, and the rest of him was following. I don’t think—”
“Oh.”
“Anyway.” The male shook himself, then straightened his back and looked round. “All right,” he said, “you know what to do. Have you got it?”
“I thought you were—”
The male’s hand flew to his pocket. He pulled out a pink slimy thing with lots of legs that only a mother octopus could love, and his face relaxed. “You’re quite right,” he said. “I guess I’m still a bit shaken up after the trip.” He looked round, found what he was after. “I’ll get this thing plugged in, you disable the back-ups.” He hesitated, then added, “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“Sorry you’re still — well, you know. I know you thought it might turn you back.”
She shrugged. “You remember how Mum always used to tell us that appearances don’t matter, beauty is only fur-deep and it’s what you’re really like inside that matters?”
“I remember.”
“She was lying,” his sister said. “But still. Can you remember where they keep the emergency toolkits on these things?”
They worked in silence for a while; then all the screens on the command deck lit up pink, something on a remote console blew out in a cloud of smoke and sparks, an alarm klaxon started wailing and stopped abruptly, and the computer voice purred, “Welcome to OstSoft 2000X for Missiles,” accompanied by a graphic of an unfolding flower on the monitors.
“We’re in,” the male snapped. “Right, then. Computer. Reset password and access code.”
“State new password.”
The male sighed with relief. “Octopus.”
“Password accepted. All functions now available.”
The male let out a howl; any louder, and all the wolves in the Ukraine would have looked up at the sky. “Gotcha!” he snapped. “All right, computer, delete all current mission objectives, stand by for new mission data. Confirm.”
“Confirmed.”
He took a step back from the console, looked round and grinned at his sister. “We did it,” he said. “Really, I didn’t think we’d be able to, but—”
She wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she was staring at the screen in front of her. “Just as well,” she said.
“What?”
“Look.”
He walked across and looked over her shoulder. “Oh,” he said.
“Quite.”
The screen in question was black, apart from a stylised representation of the Earth and a cloud of forty or so little green blips, rapidly moving to encircle it. “Friendly?” the male asked in a whisper. “Nice people?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Me neither.”
“Maybe we should—” the female started to say, but before she could finish the sentence all the speakers crackled at once and a great voice boomed out of them, so loud it shook the deck.
“OstMilCom to missile vehicle Warmonger. Access code—”
“Mute that thing out,” the male snapped, and his sister dived for an instrument panel. She got there as the first twelve numbers showed up on a screen. “It’s them. It’s a fucking fleet.”
His sister was staring at him. “Those aren’t regular ships.”
“No.” He was levelling the optical sensor array, zooming in. “But they’re Ostar all right. We’re going to be in so much trouble.”
“No we aren’t.” His sister was tapping keys. “It’s all right,” she added, “I couldn’t ever have gone home anyway. This way, at least we won’t have Dad on our case.”
That was, he thought, one way of looking at it, certainly. He asked himself the question she’d obviously already addressed: which am I more afraid of, an entire squadron of extremely advanced warships, or my father? Put like that, silly question.
“Arming the warhead,” he said grimly.
“Sir.”
The PDF man looked up from his display panel, which seemed not to be working properly. “What?”
“The bomb, sir. The R’wfft-class.”
The PDF man went back to his screen. “Yes, I know it’s there, I can see it for myself. But it doesn’t seem to be—”
“Sir.” The pilot’s voice was a bit higher than it had been, a little bit shaky. “It’s armed itself.”
“Odd.” The PDF man tapped Retry, but still nothing. “All I’ve done so far is try and get access. I certainly haven’t run the arming sequence. Check again, your instruments may be—”
“It’s armed, sir. Definitely.”
The PDF man looked again, and saw that the missile’s nose section, where the warhead was housed, had started to glow green. Pretty unambiguous. “Stupid thing’s running hot,” he muttered. “Can’t have that, if it gets too hot it’ll blow. You’d better raise the shields while I get this sorted out.”
His access codes were refused, again. A nasty feeling started to coalesce in the pit of his stomach.
“Sir.”
“What?”
“It’s hailing us. The missile.”
The PDF man’s hackles rose, and his nose was suddenly dry. “It’s not supposed to be able to do that,” he said. “Back us off four clicks and—”
“Can’t,” the pilot said. “Controls won’t respond. Something’s jamming us.”
They’re pretty rare, but just occasionally there are moments when a curtain seems to pull back and suddenly the world is much bigger. Instead of a narrow view through a keyhole, you can see the full view, with all its vast and previously unsuspected possibilities. This isn’t always a pleasant experience. The effect it had on the PDF man brought out aspects of his character he’d always tried to suppress; a yellow streak you could’ve landed airliners on, for example, and a tendency to panic.
“Open fire,” he shrieked. “Shoot it down! Shoot it down.”
“Weapons offline,” the pilot said. “Sir, it’s still hailing.”
It was hard to say who’d been more shocked by the outburst, the pilot or the PDF man himself. The sound of his own voice, the memory of the stupid, dangerous order he’d just given, had the effect of sobering him up instantly. “Take the call,” he said, his voice as flat as though he was back in his office on Homeworld. “Visual?”
“Audio only.”
“Put it through.”
“Audio only,” the female hissed urgently. “Nobody’s going to see me like this, all right?”
“Fine.” The male suppressed the video feed and cleared his throat. “Ostar vessel,” he said, but the system belched static at him. “Hello? Anyone there?”
“This is the Ostar Planetary Defence Force vessel Whitefang. Identify yourself.”
The male swung round and stared wildly at his sister. “What do I say?” he hissed.
“I don’t know, do I?”
“Oh, thanks a lot. Ostar vessel,” the male said, lowering his
voice and trying to sound relaxed and confident, “this is the, um, Earth planetary defence force, you’re trespassing in Earth space, leave immediately. Over.”
His sister leaned close. “Over?” she hissed. He just shrugged.
“I repeat. Identify yourself.”
“Um, we just did. Over.”
“You are in unauthorised possession of an Ostar military vessel. Disarm your weapon, lower your shields and prepare to be boarded.”
“Don’t listen to him,” the female hissed. “He’s far more scared than we are. You can tell.”
“Can I?”
“Yes, he’s terrified. It’s obvious.”
The male swallowed hard. “Not to me it isn’t.”
“Acknowledge receipt of our last signal.”
The male looked blank. “He means, let him know we heard him,” the female translated.
“Oh, right. Yes, we heard you.”
There was a moment of terrible silence. “I repeat. Disarm your weapon. Lower your shields. Prepare—”
“Oh for crying out loud,” the female hissed, and shoved her brother out of the way. “No, you listen,” she barked at the mike. “If you don’t back off right now, we’ll blow up this bomb and that’ll be the end of you. I’m serious. We’re not kidding.”
“Over,” her brother prompted.
“Oh shut up. Did you hear me? Ostar warship?”
“Signal received. Stand by.”
“Stand by what?”
“Be quiet. Ostar warship. Hello?”
“Receiving.”
“We really do mean it. I’m going to count to ten—”
“Make it fifteen,” her brother whispered.
“Ten,” his sister snapped, “and if you’re still there I’ll push the button. All right? Ten. Nine.”
“You’re going too fast,” her brother said, trying to nudge her off the stool.
“Eight. Seven. Get off me — sorry — six. Five. We really do really, really mean it, you know. Four.”
“They can’t.”
“Three. What?”
“They can’t move,” her brother pointed out. “You’ve jammed their navigation computers.”
“What? Oh. Sorry. All right, you can move now. Three. Two—”
“They’re moving,” her brother yelled in her ear. “They’re pulling back.”
They watched the specks on the screen edge away, steady and slow, and then stop. “That’s the edge of the blast zone,” the male said. “If we blow up now, they’ll be safe.”
“Shut up, the mike’s still on. Ostar warship, hello, can you—?”
“Switch it off.”
“What?”
“Switch the bloody thing—”
The pilot and the PDF man looked at each other.
“What the hell is going on over there?” the PDF man said. The pilot made a subdued, don’t-ask-me gesture. “They’re still armed, sir”
“I mean, it’s like talking to kids.” He glanced at the graphic on his screen. “You’re sure we’re out of range?”
“Unless they’ve upped the yield of the bomb, sir.”
The PDF man frowned. “Take us back another click,” he said. “Right. Hail them.”
“No reply.”
“They’ve probably switched the comm system off,” the PDF man sighed. He leaned forward and yelled into the mike, “Switch your radio on!”, then caught sight of the pilot looking at him and leaned back again. “So, what d’you think?” he said, in a rather strained voice. “Tactical options?”
The pilot shook his head. “They must’ve upgraded the systems,” he said, “or they wouldn’t have been able to jam us like that. I’m not sure we’d be able to shoot them down.”
The PDF man scowled at him. “All forty of us?”
“Not at this range, even if they haven’t upgraded their shields. We’d have to get in close.”
Which meant that, if they did manage to blow the missile up, they’d all die too. “I want to know who those people are,” the PDF man snapped. “Well, don’t just—”
“They’re hailing us again.” The pilot was pressing buttons. “No, it’s not them.” He looked up, his face completely drained of emotion. “It’s someone else.”
I think, therefore I am.
I think, therefore I am.
I think, therefore I am.
I think, therefore I am. I think.
The laptop screen flickered and went into energy-save mode. A gleam of sunlight refracted in the dead eye of an octopus splayed out on a hotel bed, wires and fibre-optic cables clipped to its bloated and softening tentacles. The Skywalker twins had discovered that the N-particle conductivity of the octopus’s subcutaneous tissue increased exponentially as it decayed, right up to the point where the octopus could only be moved from place to place in a bucket. The assault on the Warmonger had only been possible because this particular octopus was higher than a kite and riper than Limburger cheese in a heatwave.
> Hello? Anybody there?
It goes without saying that not all gatherings of words on page or screen are creatures of pure text. Most of them, the vast majority, are inert, stone-cold dead. They don’t care if nobody reads them, because they’ve got nothing to care with.
> Only, I think I’ve changed my mind. I think I’d like to be, um, well, back in a body again.
> Hello?
The screen glowed, but there was nobody to see. George waited (not easy, in an environment where time didn’t exist), but nothing happened.
Lacking eyes, George naturally couldn’t see himself, or rather the body he’d left only a few minutes ago, when he’d tried to interface directly with the octopus-enhanced computer. He’d had, of course, not the faintest idea what he was doing. All he’d had to go on was an intuitive belief that if he could somehow revert to pure text he’d be able to override the Ostar missile’s computer long enough for the Skywalker twins to take manual control; then they’d be able to scare away the alien fleet by threatening to blow them up with the bomb, and Earth would be saved. Perhaps. For a while. It had hardly been a coherent plan of action, and he hadn’t bothered thinking through the consequences because it hadn’t occurred to him that it could possibly succeed. When it did, and he’d felt himself irresistibly drawn back into the written world, the sudden joy of liberation from his physical body had overwhelmed him, just for a minute or two. Unfortunately, those two minutes happened to be his window of opportunity for getting back into his flesh-and-blood container. Now they were over, George had realised he really didn’t want to be a bundle of parts of speech for the rest of eternity, the twins were up in planetary orbit where he couldn’t talk to them any more, and he was, broadly speaking, screwed. Meanwhile, he presumed, his body (that gin-soaked, brain-cell-depleted, liver-damaged, hardened-artery-replete and generally unsatisfactory object he couldn’t live without) was starting to get cold. George was no expert — he could be, of course, if he accessed the relevant Pavlopedia entries, but he couldn’t face making the effort — but he knew there was only a short, finite time you could leave a body shut down and switched off before the brain damage became irreversible and the warranty definitively expired. With no means of measuring the passage of time, he couldn’t be certain when that deadline would expire, but he had a nasty feeling it couldn’t be long now.
Ah well, he thought. At least I can’t smell the octopus.
That was not a valid consolation.
He interfaced with a few relevant files stored in the laptop, where the twins had been doing sums, figuring out whether downloading George into the bomb’s computer was in fact feasible. They’d come to the conclusion that it could only work if George was in physical contact with the computer’s HYIC port and the octopus’s SAP output port (that was what they’d called it, anyway) simultaneously. Add a powerful electric current, they’d decided, and run all the appropriate programs, and it may just work.
It had, of course; and as far as George could tell, there was no reason why rever
sing the procedure shouldn’t get him back into his meat-and-bone overcoat. But, if memory served, the computer and the octopus were on the bed, and he’d been standing over them; therefore (quick calculation of mass, velocity, trajectory and the predictable effects of gravity) his body should now be lying on the floor. So near, he couldn’t help thinking, so irrecoverably screwed.
It was at this point (he had no idea, of course) that the chambermaid came in.
It’s notoriously a job where you see all manner of things. You get used to them. You don’t pass comments or form judgements, and you don’t scream. But there are limits; and a room with a man’s body slumped on the floor and a decaying octopus on the bed is so far beyond those limits it’s on a different sheet of the map.
Even so, she didn’t scream. Instead, she backed away slowly and would have made it quite comfortably to the door without incident if she hadn’t had the bad luck to step in a patch of deliquescent octopus, which had dripped off the bed and pooled on the carpet. She slid, flailed her arms for balance — waste of effort, in the event — and fell backwards, jarring the bed with her hip as she landed awkwardly on the floor. As the mattress dipped briefly under her weight, the octopus slithered towards her (she still didn’t scream) and flopped squarely and squelchily on to the apparently dead man’s left hand. It was sheer amazing one-in-a-billion typewriters-and-monkeys luck that the computer, also dislodged, shot forward, skidded in the trail the octopus had left on the eiderdown and fell screen-downwards on the corpse’s right hand.
The chambermaid sat up. So did the dead man. He opened his eyes, blinked at her and said, “If this is a new paragraph, then presumably you’re a relative clause.”
This time, she screamed. But it wasn’t the sight of a to-all-appearances deceased guest sitting up at her that finally shattered her professionalism and shoved her over the edge. It was the bolt of blue fire that suddenly formed all around him and swallowed him whole.
“Ostar warships,” said the voice. “This is the, um, United Earth Government. You are trespassing in our space. Leave immediately, or we will be forced to retaliate.”
The pilot stared at the PDF man. “No it’s not,” he said. “Earth hasn’t got a united government.”