His story was full of Horch names that I didn't retain, and matters of who took precedence over whom that I didn't understand in the first place. Most of it, though, was blow-by-blow descriptions of how his parents' technicians had managed to insert their fighting forces into the Others' channel. And how the first wave of Horch fighting machines had been destroyed in a few moments. And how the Horch had sneaked a second wave in through a different transit machine while the defenders were distracted by what was happening at the first one. And-
And on and on. Kofeeshtetch loved the subject. He acted it out, with limbs and neck flying in all directions. It was interesting to me, too, as an insight into how the Horch did their fighting… but, at that moment, not very. I wanted to get on to my own problem, but I didn't want to interrupt.
When Kofeeshtetch got to the point where their Horch robots were mopping up the rags and tags of flesh that was all there was left of the Others' warriors, I began to hope for an ending. "The Greatmother has told me," he was saying proudly, "of how vile the stench of those decomposing corpses was, so that for a time it was difficult to breathe, even more difficult to eat without vomiting. To carry on the work of this installation was very hard."
Carry on? I did interrupt him then. "But this was an Others' installation. Why would you want to carry on their work?"
He gave me a scornful hiss, thrusting his head in my face. His breath was not nearly as inoffensive as Beert's. "Of course it had been operated by the Others. What of it? The Others are filthy vermin, but there are some few objectives we share in common. Do you want to hear the story of my parents or do you not?"
I wanted to hear what those common objectives were, but I wanted even more to get to my own desires. "Your parents were very, very brave," I said with admiration. "I only hope that I can be as brave, and as successful, when I too fight against the Others."
Kofeeshtetch swayed his neck indecisively back and forth for a moment. I could see that he was reluctant to give up his favorite subject, but he was torn.
I understood his dilemma. When my uncle Max Adcock, the not-very-successful buccaneer capitalist, told me about the next great stock raid or franchise operation that was going to make him rich at last, if only Uncle Cubby would help him out with a little seed capital, I always listened. To the ten-year-old I was at the time, it was exciting. I don't mean that I liked Uncle Max. Apart from the fact that he was my cousin Pat's father, I didn't have much use for the man. Kofeeshtetch didn't have a lot of use for lower organisms like me, either, but he had the same yearning to hear about exciting adventures. "Tell me your plan," he said sulkily.
Actually, the word "plan" was a lot more dignified than my hazy notions deserved, but I did my best. I said, "A scout ship of the Others is somewhere near my home planet. With your Greatmother's gracious permission, and assuming the proper channels can be accessed, I am going to invade it and kill everyone aboard."
"Hum," he said-actually, it was more like an approving growl. But he looked puzzled. "What do you mean by a 'scout ship'?"
It was my turn to be puzzled. Neither Beert nor Pirraghiz had had any difficulty knowing what I was talking about, so why did he? I floundered. "In order to discover civilizations like mine, the Others send out exploring vessels which travel slower than light speed. When they find one-"
"Yes, yes," he said, sounding impatient. "But such vessels come in many varieties, both for us Horch and the Others. Which kind do you mean?"
I winced. It had never occurred to me that there might be different kinds. But I said staunchly, "Whatever kind is there. It doesn't matter. I will slip aboard and start shooting. Only," I added, "there is a problem. I won't be able to do any of that unless I have weapons and a scrambler to disrupt their communications, like those the Wet One had. Now those are gone-"
Kofeeshtetch was waving his arms reprovingly. "You are so ignorant," he complained. "All such patterns are stored in the transit machine. It would be quite simple to make copies if there were any point to it, but is there? I am not satisfied that your plan is good."
He meditated for a moment, then gave a decisive neck-swirl. "I wish to see this scout ship for myself." He turned his head to the nearest Christmas tree and barked, "I am waiting! Haven't you found that planet for me yet?"
You wouldn't think a Christmas tree could look embarrassed, but this one's branches and twiglets hung low. "We have not yet made a positive identification."
That bugged me. "Of course you can do it! You've been relaying data from it for months!"
The robot didn't extend even one tiny spring in my direction. To Kofeeshtetch it said, "Relays occur automatically. We have traced all such, but there are two eights of planets transmitting this sort of data. Can this organism say whether his people use radio?"
I resisted an impulse to laugh. "Oh, yes. All the time," I said.
Still to the Horch: "That eliminates some. Then how many moons does this planet have?"
"One big one."
"Then, Kofeeshtetch," the robot said, shooting out a sprig of needles to touch the controls of the screen, "it is likely that this is the planet you seek."
And when the picture had formed in the bowl, it was.
I could see the dagger of India stabbing down into the Indian Ocean, with the little island of Sri Lanka dripping off its tip. As the planet slowly spun I could see Africa emerge, and the beginnings of Europe. There was something strange about the image, though. Tiny dots of reddish light that I had never seen before were sprinkled around the globe. But there was no doubt what I was looking at. I swallowed. "That's the Earth," I said, suddenly homesick.
Kofeeshtetch was not sentimental. "Not the planet!" he snapped at the robot. "Isn't there a survey vessel of the Others nearby?"
"We have identified one, yes. Here is a plot of its transit machines-"
Three or four of those reddish lights appeared, close together, against a background of stars. It was the stars, more than those little lights, that made me catch my breath. This was none of that awful intergalactic black, nor all those multicolored headlights of the globular cluster. These were my own stars, the very constellations you can see from Earth. I recognized at least one of them, the seven stars in a cup-and-handle pattern that every child knows as the Big Dipper.
Kofeeshtetch wasn't interested in stargazing. "So many transit machines," he muttered. "Can we see the ship itself?"
At once stars and ruddy lights vanished and we were looking at another set of children's Tinkertoys. "We have no view of the specific craft, but it is probable that it is this model," the robot said.
It looked to be smaller than the nexus itself, or at least a little less complicated, but it impressed Kofeeshtetch. "But this is no mere robot scout! It must be in fact a major vessel of the Others." He swung his head to face mine. "You could not possibly succeed in attacking it single-handed! It will be staffed with many, many warriors of the Others, all better armed than you. Such a venture would require a full-scale assault, almost as large as the one with which our nest stormed this place."
That was not at all what I wanted to hear. I think I'm more or less brave, but I'm not stupid. A one-man suicide venture against impossible odds didn't sound attractive-at least, unless there was nothing better on offer. I took a chance. "I don't suppose you could interest your Greatmother in, well, in launching such an attack?"
Kofeeshtetch laughed in my face, little raucous puffs of bad breath. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. His laughter made it quite clear that the Horch were not going to launch a major battle to please a lower organism like me, especially over a pissant little planet like Earth.
What he did say was, "Your plan is not worth pursuing. Perhaps you should return to the Eight Plus Threes. I will leave you now to prepare for the feast the Greatmother is providing for Djabeertapritch."
He looked like he was getting ready to do it, too. I could feel my dreams collapsing around me, but one faint hope of an idea was percolating through my mind.
I had nearly lost him. He was just a child, after all. If I wasn't about to pursue the feats of derring-do that fired up his kid imagination, he had no further use for me. He hung indecisively from his cable for a moment, then said petulantly, "Oh, very well, but do it quickly."
Quickly was how the robot did it. The planet had revolved a little more. Now we were looking at the Atlantic Ocean, South America bulging out into it and the East Coast of the United States just visible on the periphery. I peered at that unfamiliar scattering of red spots, clustered mostly along the shorelines. I pointed. "What are those?"
Kofeeshtetch gestured, and then the robot answered me. "We have no definite identification. They appear to be satellite installations, but we do not know their purpose."
"But they're smaller, and they're right on the surface of the Earth."
"That is not precisely accurate," the machine corrected me. "If you will observe, they are all in the water regions of the planet, close to the land masses but not on them."
"But still-" I began to argue.
I didn't finish. Kofeeshtetch waved me to silence. He was beginning to catch the spirit. "That might be a workable plan," he said thoughtfully. "A smaller installation. Only one transit machine each. Perhaps only operated by machines, certainly with a much smaller complement than the ship in space-yes! This may be worth considering. I will think on this, and perhaps seek advice from the Greatmother."
When I got back to my room, as jubilant as I dared be, Pirraghiz was waiting for me. She listened, but didn't comment, as I told her what had happened. "Where's Beert?" I asked. "I must tell him!"
"Djabeertapritch is sleeping, Dannerman. This has been exhausting for him."
She didn't sound excited at all, and she was bringing me down with her. "But he will want to hear all this!" I insisted.
She gave me one of those six-limbed shrugs. "You can speak to him when he wakes, Dannerman," she said firmly. "He has some important decisions to make, and he has ordered me to let him rest. It is better if you rest, also. Would you like to eat first?"
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I didn't get a chance to talk to Been after his sleep. I didn't get much sleep for myself, either, because Pirraghiz woke me up to tell me that the Greatmother's banquet was just about to happen and we'd better get a move on.
I could have wished for a little more warning. I really needed to talk to Beert, but when I tried to grab him he simply waggled his neck at me. "Later, Dan," he said, sounding distracted and not really all that interested. "We can't keep this Greatmother waiting." I was also conscious of really beginning to need a bath, and there wasn't anything of that sort in the chambers they'd given us. So, unwashed, I followed Beert and the Christmas tree along the roped passages, hoping that the Horch sense of smell was not acute. Because I was sure I was a lot less than fragrant just then.
I could hear the noise from the feast long before the banquet hall was in sight.
The hall was shaped like a pyramid-well, like a tetrahedron, with four triangular sides, none of which was either a floor or a ceiling-and it was big. It had to be. There were at least forty Horch present. They weren't sitting. They weren't even doing what Horch do instead of sitting down like a human being. They just hung there, clipped to one or another of the brightly glowing cords that were stretched across the volume of space, like strands of a 3-D spiderweb. And they were very loudly singing.
It is hard to say what a Horch group sing sounded like. It was a little like the howling of a pack of constipated wolves, a little like hogs grunting ferociously as they battled for tidbits in a pen. The big difference was that the Horch were doing all that in unison, and that there were lyrics to the tune they sang. They sang of the Greatest of Greatmothers, and of the undying delights-or of the later-on undying delights, that is, after they'd finished whatever other dying they had to get there-of living forever, cherished in the Greatest of Greatmother's love. Does that sound awful? Sure it does. It was.
They hadn't waited for us to arrive. They were eating as they sang. A squad of the glassy robots were busily slithering along the cords, hand over hand-well, branch over twig-to serve the diners with great gobs of something that looked like pink mashed potatoes, only gluey enough to hold together in a ball; clusters of figlike fruits that probably weren't fruits at all, because they were squirming; hinged food dishes containing stuff that I couldn't see, but could smell when the nearest Horch opened theirs; mesh bags of what might have been nuts or vegetables or-well, anything at all. All I could see through the mesh was varicolored lumps of God knew what. The other thing the Horch were doing was drinking, out of bagpipe-looking bladders with spouts on one end. The Horch took the spouts in their triangular little mouths when they wanted a drink, and then some of them pointed the spouts at friends nearby and squeezed. For fun, I guess. The thin streams of yellowish liquid, looking unpleasantly like urine, splashed when they hit another Horch and kept on going when they missed. It didn't matter which they did, though. The Christmas trees were diligently sucking the spilled liquid out of the air as they passed. These masters of the universe were having their fun at a kind of college fraternity brawl. I guess the overworked robots weren't enjoying it, but probably they weren't programmed to enjoy anything anyway.
Our personal robot first escorted Beert to the heart of the web. The Greatmother was there and eating industriously, pausing in her own consumption only, now and then, to stuff some particular delicacy into the mouth of her least grandson, Kofeeshtetch. Having their mouths full didn't keep them from singing along, welcomingly waving Beert to join in.
Pirraghiz and I weren't included in the invitation. We weren't given the good seats, either. A pair of serving robots dropped their waitering duties long enough to tug us to webs at one vertex of the tetrahedron. Then they scuttled away to fetch fresh delicacies for the Horch.
We weren't alone there. There were three or four Horch nearby, singing along lustily with the others though they couldn't have been very high ranking-our place was the exact equivalent of a table by the kitchen door in a human restaurant, even to the procession of serving robots that streamed back and forth past us. Our neighbors didn't stop singing. They darted their heads to glance at us as we arrived-not cordially. I could almost hear them asking each other what cretin had invited these nasty-looking lower orders to the feast. Especially ones who smelled as strange as Pirraghiz and, no doubt, me.
We weren't totally neglected. After a few moments the robots began dropping tidbits off for us, too. First there were a couple of net bags containing some of those things like green plums I remembered from my interrogation days, then a wine sack, then two lumps of that pink dough. They didn't hand them to us. They attached them, somehow, to the cables we were clinging to. I didn't see how, exactly, because I was trying to figure out what was going on up in the high-rent district.
The Greatmother's party wasn't singing anymore. The least grandson seemed to have left the group, but I could see Beert and the Greatmother talking to each other, necks intertwined in deep conversation. I was pretty sure what they were talking about. It was me. Every once in a while one or both of them would dart their heads in my direction, but what was being said, I couldn't guess. I could only hope that it had nothing to do with my destruction of valuable Horch machinery at the Eight Plus Threes.
Pirraghiz interrupted my fairly apprehensive thoughts about that by poking my shoulder. "Eat," she said.
That was easier said than done; I didn't see how I could hang on to the cable and eat at the same time. Pirraghiz solved the problem for me. She had linked herself to the cable with one of her lesser arms. Now she took a firm hold of my leg with another, thus safely mooring me, while she finished picking over the goodies the robots had left us with a couple more. Having six arms certainly had its points.
She drew me close enough to hear her over the noise of the singing, which was getting even more boisterous.
"You can eat this," she said, offering me a lump of the pink dough. "Some of the fruits, too, after I pick the seeds out. Not the liquid. Not anything else."
The pink stuff was warm and soft and smelled a little like garlic. I nibbled at it to be polite. Although I was hungry, I still had the hope in my heart, now dwindlingly faint, that before long I would be where I could get a thick steak, with french fries and a few slices of red, ripe tomatoes, and maybe even a bottle of beer…
"Look," Pirraghiz said, sounding surprised.
What she was pointing at was the least grandson, rapidly swinging himself in our direction, looking as though he had something to talk to us about.
He did. As soon as he was near he announced importantly, "I have solved the problem of the order of battle-theoretically, provided it is allowed to occur. Listen attentively."
He didn't have to say that. I was doing it already. He settled himself in, close to my head, and stared into my eyes.
"There are three eights and two of the vessels on your planet," he informed me. "One is considerably larger than the others, so we will not attack that one. To one of the smaller ones, first we will send in two waves of fighting machines, two at a time. I had thought," he said meditatively, "of perhaps using a pair of the warriors of the Others as a deception tactic for the first wave." He surprised me. "You have some of their warriors?" "Of course. Quite a few were still alive, though wounded, when this place was taken. Most did not survive, but some did, even after questioning. Later, when they had been removed from the control of the Others, the Greatmother gave them to me as pets. I possess a number of such creatures," he told me proudly. "I study them to learn what lesser organisms are like, so as to be prepared for dealing with them at the Eschaton. Perhaps sometime I will show some of them to you."
Eschaton 03 Far Shore of Time Page 14