22
Dangerous
Ground
“We may have
been—er—previous,” noted BrTl with a slight cough.
“If you mean
our suspicions may have been misdirected when we thought the plasmo-blasted Full College
was all we had to worry about, you’re right,” said Jhl sourly.
“Wasn’t that
you, that claimed the yellow-haired lordship from Y-K-W had distant cognates in
it?” he inquired fuzzily.
“Uh—was it?
Wasn’t it both of us?” returned Jhl fuzzily.
“It could
have been, now you come to mention it,” he conceded sadly.
There was a
short silence.
“May I have
another look?” asked Jhl delicately.
“Be my
guest,” he groaned.
Jhl had
another look. She couldn’t see that BrTl’s shield had been penetrated, but
there were certain indications of a sort of almost denting, as by the probe of
a Y-K-W.
“Say it, say
it, get it over with,” he groaned.
“Probed. Not
Space Patrol, BrTl. Very definitely the IG Minerals Commission,”—he shuddered
all over, but fortunately they were on the ship—”and, I’d say, nothing below
the rank of Commissioner.”
BrTl gulped.
“Think
yourself lucky you were only probed, with very little result. A’ailh’sa and The
Mk-L’ster have been positively raked over,”
He
shuddered, but admitted: “Just as well we didn’t leave much in her head that
any being above Class 1593, what am I saying, any being listed under the Act,
would be interested in. What about him?”
he added cautiously.
“I’ve
cleaned it up a bit,” admitted Jhl, pulling her ear, “and I’ve got a nice
shield in there. Not even dented. Actually, not even spotted.” She gave him a
wry look.
“Congratulations, go to Advanced Pilot Training,” he groaned.
“Mm.”
“And
Rh’aiiy’hn?”
Jhl smiled.
“He’s getting really good.”
“Eh?” he
gasped.
“Oh, Blerrinbrig’s, no!” she said with a
startled laugh. “No, but it took an appreciable effort for this putative
Commissioner to penetrate it.”
“Almost-certain Commissioner, isn’t it? What’s next? Can they arrest a
Regent on F-Day plus one?”
“If the
Intergalactic Minerals Commission applied themselves they could probably arrest
a Regent before he’d even heard of the Federation! But don’t worry, Trff’s
decided it likes him.”
“Just as
well!” BrTl had a short brood on matters. “Who or what is this almost-certain Commissioner?”
“I think—I’m
seventy percent sure—it, or rather he, is Captain Marvel.”
“WHAT?”
When the
echoes had ceased quivering, Jhl sighed: “Don’t say it. I know: we’ve all known
him for years, he’s been your boon-companion ever since your neck-hair learnt
to filter properly, he’s introduced five megazillion generations of raw young
Space Service cadets to their first Orbiting Vvlvanian Moonblaster Specials—”
“Ten.”
“All right,
to their first ten Orbiting Vvlvanian Moonblaster Specials,” she said coldly.
“Don’t
be like that! It can’t be him, Jhl, he’s been around since Blerrinbrig was a
pup: he’s at every F-Day celebration across the two galaxies, with his
Vvlvanian-cursed Carnival Extrava—Oh.”
Jhl eyed him
drily. “Mm. Cursed good cover, isn’t it?”
“Uh—yeah,”
he gulped. “But... Captain Marvel and His Carnival Extravaganza? It’s— It’s...”
Words almost failed him. “Mangy,” he said finally in his Slaetho-Xathpyrian
dialect.
“Huh? Oh!
Mangy! Good word for it! Um… Have you ever seen a gdoyng from D-Yhhrri banging
its head against a—”
“Yeah. Why
they call them that. Gdoyng, gdoyng, gdoyng,” he said musically.
“Uh-huh.
Well, that’s what a very, very cautious look behind that soup of Orbiting
Vvlvanian Moonblaster Specials that Captain Marvel keeps in his head felt like.
After that, I stopped.”
“Definitely
a job for Trff,” he decided, shuddering. “But what made you suspect him in the
first place?”
“Dunno. I
had a bit of a think about who turns up at every F-Day celebration in the Known
Universe—” She shrugged. “It came down to him or J’rd’s Executive Director for
the Unfederated Worlds.”
“Huh?”
“The J’rd’s
I/C FWs, FW head!”
“Why didn’t
you say so in the first place? Um... both of them?” he said in a hollow voice.
“All things
are possible. But this Executive Director’s a newish one. Well, suspicious in
itself, I grant you. But the records match, the old one retired: it was an
Orpetularian, it had to go home and divide.”
“Got it,” he
acknowledged. “So what’s the newish one?”
Jhl winced.
“A Whtyllian.”
“Doesn’t
that prove it?” he said sweetly.
“Mm-mm... He
was on nn-pth-qR before this.”
“Never heard
of it,” he said instantly.
Jhl gave him
a bored look.
“In that
case, he’s that rather pleasant humanoid being that bought that load of
extra-special plush-moss off me at an extra-special price.”
Jhl made a
rude noise.
“Almost an
extra-special price,” he admitted.
“Right. As
he did so, rooking you out of those atmo-blobs that you were maintaining the
said plush-moss with, for approximately one megazillionth of their market
value.”
BrTl began
indignantly: “What would you have done? Those blobs are IG-illegal in the two
galaxies and he said he had friends in Space Patr—Ugh,” he ended weakly.
“Well,
possibly ugh. But actually, his saying it inclines me to think that he’s
probably harmless. Well, would you
advertise the fact, if you were particularly well-connected?
BrTl thought
about it. “Double bluff?”
“That’s
possible, too.”
“Well—uh—you
looked? Yes. Gdoyng, gdoyng, too?”
“No.
Commodities Exchange, more or less verbatim.”
“Would any
being voluntarily keep that in its head?” he croaked. “He’ll be one of them!
Uh, hang on, couldn’t he be another Y-K-W entirely?”
“Huh?”
He blinked
pointedly.
“Space
Patrol?” Jhl gave a yelp of laughter. “No! No, the being’s a cursed sight
subtler than any of those simple-minded little shaded beings with their toy
probes.”
After some time,
in terms of the commonly perceived Y-K-W, BrTl said: “Well, where does that
leave us?”
“Where we’d
better be Vvlvanian-cursed careful!” she said with feeling.
“Yeah. And
avoid Captain Marvel like a b’x fever plague—right.”
“They’ve
gone where?” she gulped.
The
motherly, in mammalian terms, Belraynian Chief Delegate’s bond-partner replied
in surprise: “I didn’t think you’d object, Captain. Little G’gg was very keen
to go.”
He wasn’t
all that little, of course, in terms of mammalian humanoid norms, and of his
mammalian humanoid age, but let it pass: almost any sentient being except an
elderly Mklontian, a Thwurbullerian or a full-grown female-tended xathpyroid
was little to a Belraynian bond-partner. And his brain was little, all right.
So was that of the Vvlvanian-cursed quintuple idiot that hadn’t put a block in
said brain on the subject of Carnival Extravaganzas. Great splintered shards of
quog!
“Jaff and
Joff are with him, of course,” offered the Belraynian bond-partner.
In mammalian
humanoid terms they were less than G’gg’s age and so was their shared brain.
“And I sent
Lieutenant dqxH ut paxeR along with them to—er—keep an eye on them,” said the
Belraynian bond-partner with the Belraynian equivalent of a slight cough.
“Thank you,
Father-of-Jaff-Joff,” said Jhl politely in his Belraynian dialect.
Perking up
amazingly, the Belraynian bond-partner seemed prepared to settle down for a
lovely chat about the relative merits of the First Schools on Belraynia,
Bluellia, and all points north, east, west and south of them, but Jhl excused
herself politely—he was well-meaning, if, at least in Belraynian terms, dimmer
than M’mri’in—saying she thought that, dqxH ut paxeR or no, she’d better go and
look for them before it got dark.
“Darkish,”
Father-of-Jaff-Joff corrected.
“Yes. But
neither of the Old Rthfrdian moons sheds very much illumination, to the
humanoid eye,” explained Jhl politely.
“I’m so
sorry,” he said formally.
Bowing politely,
Jhl replied equally formally: “Thank you. I’ll take my leave, then,
Father-of-Jaff-Joff.” And escaped.
Great
steaming piles of mok shit, what a— Yes, well, never mind that. Follow the
smell of mangy semi-sentient beings and very old blobs struggling to maintain
some sort of lift and find Vvlvanian-cursed Captain Marvel’s Vvlvanian-cursed
Carnival Extravaganza, she supposed, signalling frantically for a— Oh.
“No
hire-bubbles,” a Thwurbullerian from the next parked ship but one reminded her
helpfully, waggling its frontal lobes slightly.
In return
Jhl managed the mammalian humanoid equivalent, a pale mammalian humanoid smile.
“Right. Pudrio Groump Lramsdorl, then?”
“Pudrio
Groump Lramsdorl it is,” agreed the Thwurbullerian dully.
They waited,
perforce…
“Dark!”
gasped the Thwurbullerian, stumbling on the uneven ground.
Kindly Jhl
extended an appendage. “Yes. Primmo,” she said grimly, since it was between
their off-world selves.
“And how!”
gasped the Thwurbullerian, grabbing the appendage. It weighed something like fifty
times what Jhl did, but the Thwurbullerian weight in any sort of grav usually
redistributed itself in order to allow the being to keep its balance, so this
one regained its confidence and righted itself without much difficulty. “If it
wasn’t for the low grav, I wouldn’t know which way was up,” it noted mournfully.
The grav was
pretty well mammalian-humanoid-normal, but Jhl agreed glumly: “You said it.
Where are you heading for?”
“The J’rd’s.
Their I/C FWs sent me a customized individual invitation to a reception. You
probably got one, too, every being attached to every delegation did. It’ll be a
J’rd’s-ware party, of course,” it said heavily, “but what else is there to do
in the dark on a primmo like this?”
Jhl didn’t
venture any suggestion, it wasn’t far wrong.
“No nnru dives,”
it added kindly.
Starting
slightly, though it hadn't literally been reading her mind, Jhl agreed: “You
said it. Let me take you there: it’s really close, we’re right downtown.”
“Is it?
Thank you,” it said glumly.
“You
wouldn’t know it,” she agreed. “It doesn’t look much lighter to me than it does
to you.”
“You are
humanoid, Captain, aren’t you?” it said cautiously.
“Yes, but as
some of us might have mentioned, this,” said Jhl grimly, guiding it away from a
huge pot-hole, “is a primmo.”
They reached
the J’rd’s without further mishap. True, it had a giant lumo-blob sign three
xathpyroid storeys high on top of it that said “J’rd’s” but down here at pot-holed
street level, where they were, that
didn’t help all that much.
“Thank you!”
the Thwurbullerian gasped as an IG-illegal-before-F-Day porto-blob wafted it
away to the reception, or, as it were, J’rd’s-ware party, on the top floor.
“Don’t buy
anything!” called Jhl with a laugh.
“I always
do,” came its lugubrious reply as it was wafted aloft.
Jhl smiled a
little but set off with a grim look round her mouth to the outskirts of the
business area, where Captain Marvel and his Carnival Extravaganza were parked
on, more or less, a vacant lot.
When she got
there, G’gg was suspended fifteen IG fluh in the air by a very old lift-blob,
which was about to give out. Whether or not this was a Test, Jhl didn’t pause
to consider. An Eeiiay was standing nearby, emanating boredom: she sent a
warning message to its bird-brain and it swooped up and caught him just as the
exhausted blob gave way.
“Galaxious!”
he gasped as it set him down.
“That was
not part of the ride. This being has just saved your life. –Thank you very much
indeed,” said Jhl grimly to the Eeiiay.
“Not at all.
Are you in charge of it?” it returned courteously. It peered at them in the dim
light of the slightly-less-than-a-thousand flickering lumo-blobs of the
Carnival Extravaganza. “I beg your pardon: of him.”
“Not at all.
I am now, and I can assure you he won’t be going up, in, on, or by anything
else,” said Jhl grimly.
“Good,” said
the Eeiiay. It peered again. “Captain, is it? Have you heard anything about
tonight’s reception at J’rd’s, Captain?”
“Reliably
reported to be a J’rd’s-ware party.”
“Goes
without saying,” it agreed mournfully.
“I think
quite a few beings have gone,” said Jhl cautiously.
“I’ll try
it,” it decided lugubriously, flapping away.
“Galaxious!” gasped G’gg as its scrawny form
vanished into the dark of the Old Rthfrdian sky.
“Shut up,
you asteroid-brain! Couldn’t you feel
that blob was almost dead?” said Jhl fiercely.
“Slgg says
they don’t actually die: they—Um, was it?” said the asteroid-brain in
confusion.
Jhl gripped
him fiercely by his mammalian ear. “Yes.”
“Ow-ooh!” he gasped. “Don’t!”
“You’d
prefer a mind-lock, would you?”
“No!” he
gasped in horror.
“I see your
Uncle J’f has used one on you,” she said sweetly.
“Yeah!” he
gasped. “Don’t, Aunty Jhl, please!”
Groaning,
Jhl replied: “I’ve no intention of doing so, you blobbed-out asteroid-brain.
Where is the crested one? And, if it’s not too much to ask, Jaff and Joff, who
are, now I come to think of, only twelve Bluellian years old,” she noted
grimly.
“Um, they
said they were nine,” he fumbled.
“YES!” she
shouted. “Nine Belraynian years! Where ARE they?”
They were,
apparently, “over there.” Jhl went “over there,” dragging him, with marked
consideration which he did not deserve, not by the ear or with a mind-lock, but
by the skinny arm.
Jaff was
feeding jolly-berries to a fuzzy Quarvaynian Riffle in a… cage. Jhl gasped. “That’s a sentient being within the—”
“It isn’t
really, Aunty Jhl,” said her nephew quickly.
She took
another look. Uh—nor it was. “Jaff,” she said, touching his appendage gently,
“don’t waste jolly-berries on that, it isn’t real.”
“Isn’t it?”
he said in confusion. “Oh. Nor it is. Okay, I won’t. Want some?”
Jhl refused,
wincing, but G’gg amiably shared them with him. Jaff emanated happiness: he
preferred doing things with a partner. Which reminded her—
“Jaff,” she
said clearly: “where is Joff?”
“I’m just
over here,” he replied in surprise.
Wincing, Jhl
conceded silently that she might have expected that: they were only twelve
years old in Bluellian terms, after all. And who was she to say that by this
time they ought to have sorted out that shared brain of theirs?
They’re
a bit thick, said G’gg in her head. Wincing again, Jhl conceded: Right. And shut up. “Jaff!” she said
sharply. “Pay attention! Where exactly is
Joff?”
“I’m—Oh. He
went off on a ride,” he said vaguely.
Blerrinbrig’s! No doubt as they spoke he was suspended fifteen IG fluh
in the air, ready to be dropped. “Take his appendage and don’t let go,” she
ordered her nephew grimly. “JAFF! Come on, we’re going to join Joff. –Don’t
think about it, just do it!”
“I am,” he
said vaguely, munching jolly-berries. “Aunty Jhl, could we have some
Njneeainwearian chewing-taffy?”
Blinking
only slightly at being adopted as an aunt by a being twice her height and
twenty times her girth, Jhl agreed: “Only if we find Joff and paxeR both whole
and unharmed, and if I decide the Njneeainwearian chewing-taffy is—uh—not
genuine: acceptable to your metabolisms. –Yes! Both of your metabolisms, G’gg!
–Okay?”
“Ye-ah! Galaxious!” the adopted and
mammalian humanoid nephews both breathed.
Joff was
discovered inside Captain Marvel’s Z42-Class Asteroid-Reducer.
“It doesn’t
work,” he reported sadly.
“Good,”
returned Jhl heartlessly. “Get out of it before it reduces you to a pile of
cosmic asteroid-dust.”
“Oh, is that
what they do?” he said, clambering out of it.
“Only when
in working order. Come here, take your cognate’s appendage, and DO NOT LET GO.”
“I won’t,”
they both said, appendages joined, emanating happiness at her.
Jhl set off
in search of the crested one—it must be her overdeveloped sense of responsibility,
or some such—dragging G’gg by the skinny appendage, G’gg in turn gripping the
near appendage of the appendage-joined Jaff-Joff. And that was the way it was
gonna stay, until they were all safely back aboard the Belraynian ship.
“Asteroids
of Hhum!” she gulped.
“PAXER!”
screamed G’gg.
The crested
one was upside-down, fifteen IG fluh in the air, suspended by an ankle from
what might have passed for a P-385b-Class, Space Issue Mega-Crane if you could
remember back to a time they’d been in use, which no sentient being in the
Known Universe except possibly the Ju’ukrterian it-being could.
“That thing
looks rusty,” croaked the Belraynian twins.
“Doesn’t
it?” agreed Jhl cordially.
Faintly
borne on the gentle breeze of the mild Old Rthfrdian summer night came paxeR’s
voice: “Help! I think it’s stuck!”
Captain
Marvel himself was leaning on what might have passed for a (gulp) control panel
if you could remember back that far, emanating a sardonic boredom.
“H-Fi,”
decided G’gg. “I think it’s an actual machine.”
“One of
those, yeah,” she croaked. “Um—hullo, Captain Marvel. Is that thing stuck?”
Captain
Marvel was, nominally, a tripedal noornithoplasmoid. What he actually was, was
any being’s guess. At some stage he had lost one of the noornithoplasmoid upper
appendages and had had it replaced by a very obvious mechanical prosthesis.
That sort of thing was regarded as outrageously bad taste on many worlds but at
the moment Jhl frankly didn’t give a Vvlvanian curse if Old Rthfrdia might have
been one of them. At least two of the three noornithoplasmoid visual orbs had
also been replaced. What with, exactly, was any being’s guess. His three short legs,
however, were more or less intact, though there was some sort of parasite in
the second joint of one of them.
He twisted his
head on its cylindrical, neckless body slowly in their direction, still
emanating sardonic boredom. The dead-white skin was slowly overtaken by a
bright blue blush which rose up like a level tide from chin-level.
“Blerrinbrig’s!” gulped G’gg.
“Father says that sometimes that’s what
happens when a skin colour change goes wrong,” said Jaff-Joff dubiously.
Captain
Marvel’s blue flush vanished: he stretched his noornithoplasmoid olfactory
organ in a nasty simulacrum of a mammalian smile. The three young beings linked
to Jhl’s left appendage blenched.
“Hullo,
Captain,” he said, closing two eyes in order to peer with the third at her
Number Twos in the gloom beneath his P-385b-Class Mega-Crane. “Great splintered
shards of quog: Jhl Smt Wong! What are you
doing here?”
“Seconded to
the Belraynian Delegation. For my sins. I’m still Space Fleet Reserve,” said
Jhl grimly.
“In spite of
that little incident on—?” He broke off, with an excellent simulacrum of a
mammalian cough. “Good to see you. There isn’t a nnru dive on the whole of this
primmo, do you realise?”
“Yes,” said
Jhl with a sigh. “Try the native drink called uissh. Hasn’t got a delayed kick,
though. How are you, Captain Marvel?”
“Oh,
flourishing like the proverbial plush-moss spore!” he replied cheerfully.
Jhl didn’t
wince: he must be aware that she was aware that that expression was regarded as
the nadir or possibly aphelion, depending on your spatial orientation, of bad
taste on most worlds of the Known Universe: and therefore he’d used it on
purpose. G’gg and the young Belraynians gasped, but Captain Marvel didn’t
react.
“Glad to
hear it,” she said drily. “Is that P-385b-Class Mega Crane stuck?”
“Yes,” he
said simply.
“That’s our
friend up there!” cried G’gg.
“Is it?”
said Captain Marvel in astonishment to Jhl.
“Uh—acquaintance,” she conceded, wincing.
“Oh, dear,”
said Captain Marvel politely.
There was a
short silence, apart from, dimly borne on the mild breeze, the crested one’s
cries of: “Help! Help! It’s stuck!”
Captain
Marvel looked pointedly at the blaster on Jhl’s right mammalian hip.
“If I did
that,” she said, not pretending that she hadn’t picked him up but pretending
very hard that she hadn’t also picked up “Gdoyng, gdoyng,” “what being would
catch him?”
He shrugged.
“I could
climb up there,” quavered G’gg.
“Not and
live,” returned his aunt without interest.
“Well, some being’s
gotta do something!”
“Why?” said
Captain Marvel politely.
“Will that
mechanism’s grip release him?” asked Jhl, after some thought. Largely along the
lines of, if she was Vvlvanian-cursed stupid enough to climb up there after the
crested one herself, Captain Marvel would, take your pick, (a) kidnap the
youngsters, (b) eat them, (c) feed Jaff-Joff to his Brqan fiend and eat G’gg,
(d) put them in a cage, or (e) sell them to the highest bidder. Or any permutation
thereof. Without any doubt whatsoever. That was, if he was merely Captain
Marvel. What he might do if he was a Y-K-W didn’t bear thinking about, so to
speak.
“Who knows?”
replied Captain Marvel politely.
“Has it
released any beings in the past?” asked G’gg keenly, if misguidedly.
“Who knows?”
replied Captain Marvel politely.
G’gg
subsided, with a baffled glare.
“There’s a
chance he may be safe enough for the time being, then,” Jhl concluded.
“Yes,” said
Captain Marvel, bending very slowly to leeward until his stocky, cylindrical
noornithoplasmoid body reached an angle of approximately forty-five degrees.
Jhl ignored this, and he righted himself with a slight stagger.
“He’s got a
being in his knee-joint,” said G’gg in a low voice to his aunt. “It’s, um,
gnawing at it.”
“Fascinating,” she said blightingly.
G’gg
subsided again.
“Well,” she
decided briskly, “paxeR is nominally an adult being, in fact he’s nominally in
Space Service. He’ll have to take his chances. Nice seeing you again, Captain
Marvel. Watch it, when you’re feeding your Brqan fiend, won’t you? I’ve heard
they enjoy the occasional taste of noornithoplasmoid flesh.”
“They do,”
he agreed, rubbing his mechanical arm.
Managing not
to laugh—largely because, for one reason or another, G’gg and Jaff-Joff were
all about to burst into tears—she said cheerfully: “Come on, you lot! I don’t
think that counts as whole and unharmed, do you? We’ll skip the Njneeainwearian
chewing-taffy.”
She dragged
them off. She had to apply considerable force, little of which she would have
been capable of applying before she landed on Old Rthfrdia, but with a bit of
luck—hah-hah—Captain Marvel wouldn’t be looking.
“He’s still
up there,” said G’gg tearfully, glancing over his shoulder as they reached the
small gate in the impenetrable fence, where Captain Marvel’s small puce Flppu,
bracelet and all, what else, made you pay one whole ig or local equivalent each
to see the wonders of the Carnival Extravaganza.
“Yeah,” said
Jhl, glancing over her shoulder. Captain Marvel’s stocky form was again bending
very slowly to leeward. “Tough,” she added as it reached an angle of
approximately forty-five degrees and, there being no noticeably soft touches
within appendage-range of the Captain, righted itself with a slight stagger.
“But Aunty
Jhl—”
“Shut up, or
you’ll find that your Uncle J’f’s mind-lock was a bath of nga’a-nga’a feathers
compared to mine!” she snarled. “Wait,” she added grimly. She stuck her head
into the puce Flppu’s ticket-box or, to put it more accurately, cage, and said: “What’ll your master
take for that miserable, mangy, broken-down Quarvaynian oorlp he’s got in that
cage that’s pretending to be a small field?”
“From
yourself, gracious lady, many sweet kisses.”
“WHAT?” she
bellowed, turning about the same shade as it was.
“Humblest
apologies, Captain!” it gasped. “Five—um, one super-ig.”
“Blast it
out your auscultatory organ,” advised Jhl, going on her way. “Come ON!” she
snarled.
They came.
In tears, but they came. G’gg even revealed, snuffling horribly, that a Public
Ground Transport vehicle stopped just “over there”. Not, however, referring to
it as “Pudrio Groump Lramsdorl.”
Five
thousand other beings were waiting at the stop but fortunately none of them
outranked her, so Jhl, snarling: “Captain’s privilege, do you wanna argue about
it?” led her lot to the front of the queue.
Once they
were in Old Rthfrdia’s idea of Public Ground Transport she said heavily to
their snuffling forms: “Listen. The only way we could have managed to rescue
him would have been for me to climb up there, agreed?”
G’gg began:
“I could of—” but thought better of it.
Jhl looked
hard at the Belraynian physiology.
“Agreed?”
“Yeah,” they
all muttered.
“Right. And
if I had climbed up there, Captain Marvel would have, take your pick, kidnapped
you all; or eaten you all; or fed you, Jaff-Joff, to his Brqan fiend, it
doesn’t like humanoid flesh, and eaten you, G’gg, he does; or put you in a cage
like the rest of his mangy exhibits; or sold you to the highest bidder.
–Believe it!” she snapped. They didn’t, so she gave them a very nasty
mind-picture of the fate of certain less fortunate beings Captain Marvel had
encountered in the past. They didn’t wholly believe that, either, but they did
all burst into tears, so—
Jhl sat
grimly silent for the rest of the journey, sweat starting to her forehead as
she struggled to maintain her shield against the now absolutely-undoubted
mind-powers of an at-the-very-least Commissioner of the IG M.C.
“You did
quite right, Captain!” gasped Father-of-Jaff-Joff in horror, as she reported.
“Of course you couldn’t desert the children! I had no idea he had that
reputation!”
“Yes. Next
time, check with your bond-partner before you let the offspring go anywhere by
themselves on a strange world,” she said heavily.
“I will,
Captain! Most certainly!” he gasped.
“And Jaff’s
been stuffing himself with jolly-berries, I think that’s possibly why Joff’s
got stomach cramps. Wait.” She had a look. “Also, Joff’s been stuffing himself
with Captain Marvel’s Own Gelbo-Delight.”
“Gelbo-Delight? That’s quite harml—”
“His is made
of recycled lubolyon,” said Jhl heavily.
“But that’s
inert!” he gasped.
“Quite.
He’ll chuck it up in a few minutes,” said Jhl, dragging G’gg away before it
could happen.
“But we
can’t leave paxeR up there!” he wailed. “He’ll die!”
Jhl had had
enough. She expunged the lot from his asteroid-brain and to boot put him to
sleep. She then had physically to drag him to their quarters, but never mind:
it was better than having to listen to him.
… “I could happily leave him up there,” noted
BrTl happily.
Jhl sighed.
“Though we
are, of course, in some sort his superior officers,” he said glumly.
“Quite.”
“Show me.”
She did.
BrTl gaped. “That’s not high!”
“It is to
ME!” replied Jhl, getting rather loud.
“Oh. Right.
Sorry. Well, I suppose I can hoik him down, if you insist.”
“BrTl,”
said Jhl with a groan, “this isn’t
good old Captain Marvel we’re involved with, here, remember.”
“Are you
sure?”
“YES!”
“You weren’t
before,” he pointed out. “Not a hundred per—”
“I’m SURE!”
she shouted.
“Oh. Right.”
BrTl looked at her dubiously. “You look sort of almost lurghple. That’s a bad
sign with humanoids, isn’t it?”
“Not good,
at any rate. –I’m all right,” she said with a sigh. “Just tired: have you ever
had a mind-tussle with an at-the-very-least Commissioner of the IG M.C.?”
“Would I be
here now, if I had?” he returned wildly.
“No. Well,
only if they’d decided to use you as an undercover agent, forgive my paranoia,”
she said wanly.
“It’s worse
than mine!” he gulped.
“Mm. That
can happen, after a mind-tussle with a Y-K-W.”
“Uh-huh...”
“Don’t try
to look,” said Jhl tiredly. “He didn’t read me. But I didn’t read him, either.
We sort of agreed to call it quits, okay?”
“Y—Buh—That
means he knows!” he gasped.
“He knows
we’re up to something, yeah. But not what.”
“He could
have guessed that much from the mere fact of your presence on this supposedly
resourceless primmo.”
“Just
DROP IT!” she shouted.
After a
moment BrTl said, scratching his shoulder: “I’ll go by myself: it’ll be easy.”
“BrTl, he is
an IG M.C. COMMISSIONER!” she shouted.
“Don’t do that,” he groaned.
It’s all right. This it-being has—
“Shut up,
Trff, you-it’s no help,” he groaned.
It replied
with a dignified speech along the lines of although no mere IG Minerals Commission
official could penetrate the Ju’ukrterian shield, there were one or two, it
didn’t say as many as three, very superior IG M.C. beings who might just be
capable of recognising the presence
of a J— They didn’t listen, they’d heard it all a megazillion times before.
Then it’ll come, it sent sulkily.
“Trff,”
replied Jhl with a groan: “you will not come, and that’s an order! Whatever
your mind-powers, and I grant you they’re immeasurably superior to those of a
mere Y-K-W, physically you-it is a small and fragile, forgive my size-ist
usage, physical being! –And don’t tell me that’s repetitious, thanks!”
After a
moment Trff replied crossly: All right, it’ll
just help from a distance; and don’t blame it if it all goes wrong!
“It always
says that,” noted BrTl as they set out into the gloom of the Old Rthfrdian
summer night.
“Yes. Well,
it’s not too magma-pit-hot at managing your actual action. –Over there. It’ll
be quicker if you gallop.”
“Hop
aboard,” he said graciously.
Gritting her
pearlized teeth, his Captain hopped aboard.
“Ow!” he
yelped.
“Sorry,”
replied Jhl with manifest untruth.
“Where?” he groped, peering.
“BrTl, it’s
more or less a standard o-breather, c-based humanoid world,” she reminded him
heavily.
“Oh, yeah,”
he said, hastily adjusting his vision with a few blinks. “That’s better.
Uh—where, again?”
“You want
the actual bearings, do you?”
“Uh—no, I
can’t navigate too well in only two dimensions.”
“I’ve
noticed that. –Thirteen o’clock,” said Jhl unkindly in archaic
Slaetho-Xathpyrian.
“Hah, hah!”
replied BrTl crossly, setting a dead straight course for Captain Marvel’s
Carnival Extravaganza.
“Good, there’s no being around!” he hissed, as
they reached the closed and silent, impenetrable fence of the Carnival
Extravaganza.
The whole
area was now pitch-black: it was just clear of the business district but there
were no Old Rthfrdian dwellings in sight. Well, it was now too dark to see them
if there had been, but Jhl had registered the point earlier. “Ssh!”
BrTl
shrugged, but shushed. He poked the fence with a cautious toe. “Huh! Only an
optical ill— OW!” he gasped, hopping.
Asteroid-brain, said his Captain evilly in
his asteroid-brain. Now will you shut up
and LISTEN?
Standing on
five feet and shaking the other one slightly in the soothing Old Rthfrdian
breeze, BrTl listened. I can’t do it! he
sent frantically.
Jhl returned
calmly: You can, easily: that fence is
only ten IG fluh high. I know it looks higher, BrTl, that’s part of
the—er—illusion. Just take my word for it. Ten IG fluh. You could practically
hop over it.
BrTl
descended to rubbing the toe on the opposite calf. I may have to. What if you’re wrong and I crash into it?
Then
we both fall heavily to the ground. Very possibly breaking something. There’s
also the possibility that you roll on top of me, in which case that’s all she
wrote. Shall we try it?
Well, um… Trff? he sent plaintively.
Nine point nine, nine, nine— Very nearly
almost ten IG fluh. You-it can do it, easy, BrTl!
“Well, hang
on tight,” he ordered his Captain grumpily.
Jhl held on
tightly. She had ridden worse, in her time. Though not much, true.
BrTl drew a
giant breath. He backed off. He drew another giant breath. He thundered down the gentle Old Rthfrdian
slope of the rubbly Old Rthfrdian road at the fence. Jhl shut her eyes. He
leapt. He soared...
“OW! Help!” he gasped, landing neck-deep in a
Vvlvanian magma pit. “HELP! Drowning! Burning! GLUG!” he gasped.
BrTl, IT’S AN ILLUSION! shouted Jhl desperately in her First Officer’s
drowning mind. It’s NOT REAL! BrTl
continued to drown. Jhl leapt off him, rolled over on the scruffy grass near
the broken-down Mini-Whirly and scrambled breathlessly to her feet. There was
little point in pretending they weren’t there: anything but a dendrion rock or
some similar non-sentient object of similar density within a radius of ten
thousand IG spans must have heard him land. “BrTl!” she shouted, aloud: “It’s
NOT REAL! There’s NO MAGMA PIT! IT’S ONE OF CAPTAIN MARVEL’S CURSED CARNIVAL
TRICKS!”
“Oh,” said
BrTl foolishly, ceasing to drown. “Sorry.”
“Understandable,” she granted, dusting herself off. “Come on. This way—I
think. It’s not far from the oorlp’s field. I mean cage.”
“I can smell
it,” he allowed.
They found
the P-385b-Class Mega-Crane without difficulty. Their eyes, with a little help
from their shades, had now more or less adjusted to the gloom, so they were
able to see that paxeR was still up there. And that at the foot of the crane
Captain Marvel was leaning on the control panel, emanating sardonic boredom.
He eyed BrTl
thoughtfully. “One of the Br-cognates, is it? BrJk?”
“Yes,” lied
BrTl uneasily.
Captain
Marvel blinked one eye incredulously. “My very dear Lieutenant BrTl,” he said,
sounding incredibly familiar: for a startled moment both BrTl and Jhl could
have sworn it was Fleet Commander Vt R’aam: “even if I didn’t recognise your
impressive physical appearance, which is about, let me add, half an IG ton
heavier than the real BrJk’s, I can read your Space Service ID quite clearly,
even in the inadequate moonlight of this abysmal primmo.”
“That
explains what one of those eyes is,
then,” noted BrTl through the crunchers.
“Yeah. –Let
that idiot Nblyterian down, Captain Marvel: what in Federation can he mean to
you?” said Jhl grimly.
“Oh, well...
A tradable commodity?” he said, shrugging
“No-oo!” wailed paxeR from above them.
Well, above Jhl: BrTl was interestedly investigating the mechanical grip round
the crested one’s ankle.
“I can bite
through this,” he reported.
“No!” gasped
paxeR in horror.
“Not the
ankle, asteroid-brain,” he said irritably.
“All the
blood’s run to my head!” gulped paxeR plaintively.
“I don’t
think that’ll help,” said BrTl kindly. “Shall I give it a go?” He bared the
crunchers, ignoring paxeR’s terrified yelp.
“Look
again,” drawled Captain Marvel, still sounding horribly like Shank’yar Vt
R’aam.
“I've never
actually tasted blob,” said BrTl thoughtfully.
“Wait,”
warned Jhl.
“For what?
Until he summons up his—uh—puce Flppu?”
he said incredulously as it bobbed up out of the night.
“NO!”
shouted Jhl as BrTl reached out a casual pseudopod to brush the Flppu away.
“It’s not the Fl—”
Snarling,
the Brqan fiend leapt for BrTl’s great length of throat.
Jhl drew her
blaster—but somehow her hand hadn’t moved.
BrTl and the
Brqan fiend rolled over and over on the scruffy grass, snarling. Above them,
paxeR burst into walls of terror.
TRFF! sent Jhl angrily.
“It can’t
help, my very dear Captain Smt Wong,” explained Captain Marvel sweetly,
“because, as we all know, physical manipulation is not its forte. And my Brqan
fiend is very physical.”
Jhl
struggled to move. Sweat poured off her: she gasped for breath. Captain Marvel
watched sardonically as she gradually leant to leeward, attained an angle of
forty-five degrees, failed to right herself, and fell over.
Meanwhile,
BrTl and the Brqan fiend rolled over and over on the scruffy grass, snarling.
BrTl had a hand clamped over its muzzle. It had one set of claws sunk deep in
his flank, another buried in his neck-hair, and was groping with a third set
for his eyes.
Jhl sobbed
for breath. Tears of frustration rolled down her cheeks. She struggled to rise
but her legs and arms were a useless tangle. Above, paxeR was so terrified that
he’d stopped wailing.
BrTl let out
a roar of anguish. Captain Marvel smiled slightly.
“BrTl!”
shouted Jhl desperately. The words never reached the air. With a tremendous
effort she sent: BrTl, it breathes
through—third—paw!
BrTl turned
his head with a ferocious snarl and bit off the paw that was groping for his
eyes. Whatever it was that it had in its veins spurted. The breath whistled
from the severed limb, and the fiend went limp.
BrTl spat,
shuddering. “That was easy.”
“Wasn’t it?”
agreed Captain Marvel sardonically,
“LOOK OUT!”
shouted Jhl as the noornithoplasmoid leapt into the air, twisting as it came
into the form of a xathpyroid to match BrTl’s own strength. They came together
with an almighty thud and twin snarls.
They were,
in fact, very evenly matched. Was Captain Marvel doing it to amuse himself? wondered Jhl dazedly as
they rolled over and over, snarling, tails lashing the grass in tremendous
sweeps. At one point she was rolled right over to the low fence round the
Mega-Crane by BrTl’s tail. Apart from that she didn’t move: she wasn’t
entangled any more, she was simply immobilised. Possibly she was lucky he was
still allowing her rib-cage to move.
It has sent the Palace Guard! it sent.
Well, goody, let’s hope they’re in time to
be eaten! replied Jhl bitterly.
Think, Jhl. Concentrate.
Jhl was
about to wither it when she realised what it meant. Oh. Um ...
She was no
longer aware of the snarling xathpyroids on the grass. Her chest heaved
painfully, her face was a strained greyish lurghple, and her hair was soaked
with sweat as she fought to understand the physical lock Captain Marvel had
applied to her limbs. Was it... physical? Ye-es... No; yes: nerves and—OW!
Great splintered shards of— Gasping, Jhl concentrated fiercely.
“Don’t try
it,” he said softly.
Jhl sat up
with a gasp.
“Oh, the
inept ship-companion isn’t hurt. Not very much. We were evenly matched: it’s
more fun that way,” he drawled.
BrTl was
about ten IG spans away. He gave a low growl, head lowered. Jhl realised he
couldn’t move.
“Of course I
could immobilise both of you at the
same time,” Captain Marvel continued sweetly, “but this is much more fun, isn’t
it? But don’t move,” he added, with a slight motion of the blaster in his fist.
He was silhouetted
dimly against the sky. Jhl couldn’t quite make him out: he was against the
light. She peered muzzily. Two legs? Ooh, had BrTl—? No. Pity.
“Look
again!” His shoulders shook in a silent laugh.
Shan.
“That’s very
clever, Captain Marvel,” said Jhl steadily, “but haven’t you heard that Fleet
Commander Vt R’aam and I had a bust-up some time since?”
There was a
flash of pearly teeth in the gloom. “I heard it, yes: I was there, remember,
darling? You were very loud—but aren’t you always?” He gave an intimate little laugh.
Concentrate, Jhl!
I—am!
she managed.
Captain
Marvel chuckled. “I don’t pretend I can pick it up, darling, but do tell me: is
the ubiquitous Slp-Og V. Trff sending to you? Tell it it’s pointless,”
“Don’t believe
him, Captain!” screamed paxeR suddenly.
“You’d take
the word of that?” said the figure before Jhl with a lightly contemptuous laugh.
Tone and laugh were Shank’yar Vt R’aam to the life.
Jhl ignored
him. If only she could— She knew BrTl’s physiology better than she knew her
own: she must be able to— Lean into it,
BrTl! she sent, sweating. Remember
the leg!
“Darling,
Captain Marvel’s always been one of my best disguises,” he murmured. “Remember
I told you about the first time I came here? –Yes, that was as me,” he said as
Jhl’s mind cried, in spite of herself: HAH!
Gotcha! “But then a couple of times, I wasn’t disguised as a ‘trader,’
exactly—well, couldn’t expect me to give all my little secrets away to you at
once, could you?” he said, laughing silently, shoulders shaking. “No, I was
here as good old harmless Captain Marvel most of the time!” He added with a
chuckle: “The lady poet of the Lower Cwmb
found it such a romantic disguise! Oh, I was humanoid for the benefit of the
Old Rthfrdians,” he assured her. “I only do the noornithoplasmoid bit to
impress all you qwlot-soaked diplo lot.”
Whether he
was reading her, or reading BrTl, or had had the low-down from the
plasmo-blasted Full College—yes, extremely likely, now she came to think of it—Jhl
didn’t believe for a moment he was Shan. Well, ninety-nine point nine, nine,
nine percent of her didn’t.
Concentrate! repeated Trff.
Panting, Jhl
concentrated.
“Darling
Jhl,” said the humanoid figure before her—Bones of Brqa, those were Shan’s
thighs, all right!—as he took up a more casual stance, though still with the
blaster steadily aimed at her, “I’ve been myself again since round about F-Day
minus ten. The Full
College, the IG M.C. and
I have come to... let’s say, an accommodation.” He eyed her mockingly.
“Your
mother’s agreed, of course!” panted Jhl, concentrating madly. Suddenly she felt
that BrTl had—No, he hadn't. Vvlvanian curses!
“Mother had
very little choice in the matter.” He paused. “I don’t say, very little say.
She spoke at length.”
“Hah, hah!”
gasped Jhl, fighting to appear as if she was actually listening to the
Gervaynian worm, whilst concentrating on helping BrTl to unlock that lock, and
keeping her more ordinary or Jhl Smt Wong shield up sufficiently for Captain
Marvel to believe in it or at least have some faint notion that it might be the
real one; and behind that, at a much, much deeper level, to maintain her real
shield. She had sensed briefly that Trff had taken over all the other shields
she had had digits in, thank the Federation. …Was Captain Marvel intuiting, rather than reading? Yes— Irrelevant.
Concentrate!
Suddenly
BrTl gave a yelp and fell over, rolling heavily a few spans towards them.
“Oops,” said
Captain Marvel, not budging nor turning his head the slightest fraction.
“BrTl!” screamed paxeR.
“I could drop that,” noted Captain Marvel
idly.
“I’m sure
you could, Shan,” agreed Jhl cordially.
“But I’d
have to go over to the control panel,” he said plaintively.
“Oh,
couldn’t you move it from here?”
“Never have
been any good at mechanical manipulation,” he replied sadly.
This was
true. Jhl’s lips tightened for a moment.
“Shall I
immobilise you, then, and go and drop it?”
Jhl ignored
this.
“Or would
you prefer it if we did a little swap? Lieutenant dqxH ut paxeR in exchange for
the ubiquitous BrTl?”
“You
wouldn’t like the taste,” said Jhl nastily.
His
shoulders shook silently. “I haven’t much liked the taste of a lot of the meat
I’ve had to eat during the Captain Marvel thing, darling! Ever tried Flppu?
Ugh! –What about the puce one, with the bracelet key to do as you like with,
plus dqxH ut paxeR?”
“You’re not
getting BrTl,” said Jhl through her pearlized teeth.
“Darling, it
may have escaped your notice, but I’ve got him,” he drawled.
–Another
low, anguished growl from BrTl. Jhl could feel, however, that he’d almost
regained control of his tail. The sweat trickled down her hairline. She tried
not to pant.
“I’m being
terribly generous, darling Jhl,” drawled Captain Marvel or whatever he was:
“you give it up and let me—um—get rid of all the nasty memories,”—the pearly
teeth flashed—“and I’ll give you those two. I’ll just keep BrTl as a little
payment. A thank you.”
“To do what,
Captain Marvel?” replied Jhl nastily. “Put him in a cage? Sell him to the
highest bidder?”
—The tip of BrTl’s tail had twitched. Come ON!
“Not quite.
It’s part of my little accommodation. The Full College
wouldn’t agree to anything less.”
Jhl gave a short
laugh. Unfortunately that wasn’t going to distract him for long. Vvlvanian
curses! Come ON, BrTl! She could feel Trff was trying to show BrTl what to do.
Its grasp of xathpyroid physiology didn’t seem to be as good as her own: all
those IG years concentrating on plasmo-blasted blobs instead, what a waste!
“I was under
the impression that the Full
College already knows
more than enough about xathpyroid paranoia,” she said, trying to sound lightly
mocking.
“Enough to
perform any number of cures, yes.” He paused. “One gathers that they’d like to
be able to, er, manage the occurrences thereof? Something like that.”
“Charming.
–Why is we talking Intergalactics?” said Jhl suddenly in her bad Whtyllian.
“Darling,
because your Whtyllian is so superbly bad, of course!” he replied in feigned
astonishment, in faultless Whtyllian.
She gave up
on that one and switched back to Intergalactic. “I haven’t had much chance to
practise, lately.”
“No,
indeed,” he said sympathetically. “It must have been so dull for you. Never
mind. It’s all over. Let’s stop this silly pretence: your mission’s
accomplished, there are sufficient rafts of super-igs being credited to your
account as we speak, and—er—you and I are quits. But you must see it wouldn’t
be safe for me, for some appreciable period, to let you retain all that
knowledge you’ve picked up.”
“For some
appreciable period until you and the Full
College and the IG M.C.
have got your appendages on your sons’ interests here, you mean?”
“Indeed,” he
said with a slight bow. The blaster in his hand didn’t waver, though. Not that
it would, if he actually was Shan.
—Come on, BrTl, you can do it! You only
think he’s controlling the muscles, find the lock!
“What in the
name of the Federation was my
mission, Shan? I’ve been trying for months to figure it out,” she said lightly.
“Just to
keep my sons from destroying each other. And incidentally to protect my
interests.”
“Uh-huh.
Wouldn’t your interests be better served if they did destroy each other?
Neither of them have got offspring.” Jhl looked at him mockingly.
“Oh, very
true. But one would have to go through so many tedious legal formalities. So
much easier to fix all that up now that they’ve safely entered the Federation,
don’t you agree?”
Jhl
blenched. He wasn’t, of course, Shank’yar Vt R’aam, if he was a cursed good
simulacrum of him. But that sounded just so horribly likely!
“Come on,
Jhl, darling, it’s all over. I’m sorry if you expected…” He hesitated.
“Something else? Something more?”
“Like what?”
–Come ON, BrTl!
“Oh,
Federation knows, darling! Altruism on my part? Er—paternal affection?”
Jhl’s choler
rose, to such an extent that she almost lost contact with BrTl.
HELP!
he gasped
You-it’s feeding him-it, Jhl! sent Trff
urgently.
I can’t HELP it!
Wait, it sent.
Oh, thanks
very much! thought Jhl dazedly. Then, for an instant, the humanoid figure
before her seemed to waver and—almost dissolve? Nothing as definite as that.
“Very
clever: was that the Ju’ukrterian?” he said admiringly. “I didn’t know that
it—not knew anything of, undoubtedly it knows it somewhere in its
consciousness—but let us say, was interested in, in humanoid terms, the
creation of illusion.”
“You seem to
have managed to interest it,” said Jhl tightly. She and BrTl had almost gained
control of his tail...
NOW!
BrTl lashed
out with an almighty sweep of the tail, Captain Marvel gave a yell as he was
swept off his feet, and Jhl bounded up and blasted him through the chest.
BrTl
staggered groggily over to her. “Dead?”
Jhl was on
her feet, legs well braced, blaster steady on the fallen humanoid figure. “Dead
if it’s humanoid and if that’s its chest, yes.”
BrTl peered
at it, his blaster in a pseudopod, his hands poised to grab. “It still looks humanoid... Metamorph?”
“Dunno. I’ve
heard of them, never met one.”
“Never met
one before,” he corrected heavily.
“No-o...
That might have been illusion, BrTl.”
“It felt as
strong as me!” he said indignantly.
“Yeah, but
you thought you were drowning in a magma pit, a bit back, remember?”
“Oh—yeah.”
“It looked
as strong as you to me, too,” she admitted.
“Thanks. –Is
that blood?”
“Only if
it’s dead and humanoid.”
“Right.”
Faintly from
above came the crested one’s voice, with a wobble in it: “Is he dead?”
“Have you
see him dead before, paxeR?” called Jhl.
“No-o...
Watch out, Captain, he’s evil!”
“We couldn’t
have guessed!” muttered BrTl, rolling his eyes.
He-it is dead.
“Thank you,
Trff!” replied Jhl with perhaps justified tartness. “What is it, she, he, or they, if it’s not too much to ask?”
Look at his-its genetic encoding, it will
tell you-it, returned the engineering brain.
“I AM, I
can’t tell whether it’s REAL, you asteroid-brain!” she shouted.
Whtyllian, it returned succinctly.
Jhl
staggered.
BrTl shot
out a pseudopod and supported her round the waist. “Did it say Whtyllian?”
“Mm.”
He swallowed
hard. “Possibly he was playing some sort of double game all along, then,” he
croaked.
“Or possibly
the Full College got hold of him, why did we ever
let that Vvlvanian-cursed Full Surgeon near
him?” she cried in anguish.
“It was my
fault,” he muttered, shuffling his feet.
“No, it
wasn’t, BrTl,” said Jhl, wiping her cheeks with the back of the hand that
wasn’t holding the blaster: “we’ve all been manipulated nicely. But I’m
plasmo-blasted if I know when it started.”
“Me
neither,” he conceded glumly.
The it-being—
SHUT UP, TRFF! they both cried at the
tops of their minds.
BrTl poked
at the fallen figure very cautiously with his toe. Not the one that had
previously suffered from the wall. “I suppose Trff couldn’t be wrong? He is Whtyllian?”
“Mm!” said
Jhl, gulping and sniffing.
BrTl also
gulped. “He must have been plotting it all for years.”
“Mm.” Jhl
pushed his pseudopod away. Slowly she knelt beside the fallen humanoid figure.
“Is he—?”
“Whtyllian,
yes. I’m looking,” she said through her teeth.
The it-being—
“SHUT UP,
TRFF!” they bellowed.
There was a
short silence.
“Shan, why
did you DO it?” cried Jhl painfully. She gave a loud sob. Tears rolled down her
cheeks.
JHL, IT ISN’T HIM-IT! sent Trff
desperately.
“What?” she
said blankly, sniffling.
BrTl’s
blaster hadn’t wavered. “It looks like him. Inside, too.”
No!
sent the Ju’ukrterian crossly. The
it-being has not ceased to monitor the emanations from Fleet Commander Vt
R’aam!
BrTl coughed
slightly.
The it-being isn’t mistaken, BrTl. The
combined Full College couldn’t practise that sort of
deception. Not even with the help of the IG M.C. It’s... It faded: BrTl and
Jhl looked dubiously at each other. A
matter of sprtzz fibres, concluded Trff, somewhat weakly.
“Trff, the
genetic encoding’s exact!” cried Jhl. Somehow there was a loud sob in there,
too.
Not exact: look again.
“Yeah—uh—concentrate,” advised BrTl awkwardly.
Sniffing,
she concentrated. “It is a bit different,” she said dubiously. “I think.”
Yes, agreed Trff. This is... It means a... brother? Yes. Like the Regent and D’ru-son,
it explained with some relief. Same
humanoid father.
Jhl sat back
limply on her heels. “Bones of Brqa and all fourteen of its moons!”
“Blast me out beyond the last black hole, too,”
agreed BrTl, sagging. “Another
cognate?”
“I’d have
said he was Shan’s age, or more,” said Jhl dubiously, poking at the corpse with
a cautious digit.
He-it is a brother of the Fleet Commander,
sent Trff.
“WHAT?” they
shouted.
Same father? it repeated, sounding less
sure of itself.
“The whole
culture-pod’s in the plot!” cried BrTl wildly.
“Yeah.” Jhl
peered into the dead Whtyllian’s face. “He is awfully like him.”
“Horribly,”
he agreed.
“Is he
really dead?” came a wobbly voice from above.
“Oops!” said
Jhl.
“Hang on,
paxeR!” cried BrTl. “–An unfortunate choice of phrase,” he muttered to himself.
“Um—if we’re absolutely certain sure that this is dead,” he said, poking it
with the toe again, “I’ll hoik paxeR down, shall I? But by the way, that isn’t
a blob holding him!” he suddenly realised.
“No,” said
Jhl with a great sigh. “Nor it is. Well, that proves this creature isn’t Shan,
if we needed further proof. He doesn’t go in for inflicting gratuitous pain.”
What BrTl
had originally thought was a blob cunningly incorporated into the mechanism of
the Mega-Crane’s grip by Captain Marvel was now very plainly revealed to both
of them as an artery from the Nblyterian’s ankle. The severing of which by
BrTl’s crunchers would have resulted in the almost instantaneous death of the
crested one.
“You were
right to tell me to wait,” he said. “Did you know?”
“No, I just
had a sickish feeling. Plus and I could feel something creeping up on you.”
“Uh-huh.
–Hold on.” Blaster poised, he turned to the dead Brqan fiend. It was still a
fiend. And still dead. Very dead, it was starting to smell even worse than it
had when it was alive. He vaporised it.
“There’s one
or two of the menagerie,” said Jhl with a wince, as they both became aware of a
growing clamour in the background, “that wouldn’t have minded a piece of that.”
“Oops!” he
said cheerfully. “–Shall I?” He waved the blaster suggestively at the corpse of
Captain Marvel. “Or would you care for the honour?”
“I’m tempted
to feed it to the menagerie, but I have heard of cases of, um—”
“Symbiotic
regeneration?” said BrTl, fingering his blaster lovingly.
“Something
like that.” Jhl got up and stepped back. “Do it.”
BrTl
vaporised the corpse of Captain Marvel. Just to make sure, he vaporised the
spot again.
“That’ll do
it, I think,” said Jhl feebly, looking at the six-IG-fluh-deep crater.
“What about
paxeR?”
“Lift me up,
I’ll give it a go,” said Jhl, chewing on her lip.
BrTl lifted
her up. Kindly he took paxeR’s weight in a pseudopod.
“Thanks!”
gasped the crested one, tears of relief oozing from his eyes.
“I’m sorry,
paxeR. We didn’t realise he had a piece of you in here,” said Jhl.
“It doesn’t
really hurt,” he lied bravely.
“Mm. That
better?”
“Ooh, yes!”
he gasped. “I can’t feel it at all!”
“Uh-huh...”
Can you? said BrTl in her head.
I think I’ll have to actually operate: I
can’t figure out the plasmo-blasted mechanism.
Go on, then.
Jhl severed
the artery. It wasn’t much different from a humanoid one. Quickly she stuck it
back together again.
Ugh, is that Nblyterian blood?
“Shut up,”
she said before she realised he’d only said it in her head. “Um—there!”
Can he feel it?
No. It might bother him a bit off and on
until it’s properly healed, but he won’t actually feel, replied Jhl with a
wince, what the charming Captain Marvel
intended him to feel. If he lived.
“Good. –All fixed, paxeR!” he said brightly,
aloud.
“Thanks, Captain. Thanks, First,” said the
crested one with a brave smile.
BrTl replied
cheerfully: “Any time!” and set him down.
Poor paxeR
gasped, leant to leeward, attained an angle of forty-five degrees, failed to
right himself, and fell over.
“He’s only
got two legs,” said Jhl heavily.
“Right. I
sort of forgot those other two were arms,” admitted BrTl glumly, picking him up
in a pseudopod and putting him on his back. “Hold on tight, paxeR.”
“You can put
me down, both my legs are working,”
noted his Captain acidly.
“Huh? Oh:
right! Sorry.”
He put her
down. Jhl dusted her uniform off. “We’d better do something about the
menagerie.”
“Don’t think
we’ll have to,” he said, as the whole Carnival Extravaganza was suddenly bathed
in a white light from above and a greatly magnified voice boomed: “You are
surrounded! This is the Palace Guard! Surrender!”
“You
shouldn’t be here,” said Jhl tightly, as Rh’aiiy’hn jumped out of the lifter
and ran to her side, blaster at the ready.
“Are you all
right?” he replied.
“Yes. It’s
all over. And some beings,” she said, looking hard at the green fluffy sphere
that was bobbing in his wake, “were panicking unnecessarily. –YOU WERE ORDERED
NOT TO COME!”
“It thought
you-it might need it. Why did you-it let BrTl vaporise him-it?”
“Trff,” said
Jhl through her pearlized teeth: “thank you for your help from a distance,
which was what was required of you. And remind me that in your leisure moments
when we’re back aboard you’re going to undertake a stiff course in xathpyroid
physiology. Now get back on that lifter before I really lose my temper!”
“I vaporised
him because we thought there might be a slight case of symbiotic regeneration
or some such,” BrTl explained glumly, as it went.
Rh’aiiy’hn
was looking at the six-IG-fluh-deep crater. “Was—?”
“He was a
Whtyllian,” said BrTl sourly.
“Mm, the
Trff said. Are you all right, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, thank
you, sir. Um, the odd patch here and there might be starting to sting,” he
admitted, wriggling slightly. “And I can still taste that Brqan fiend. –Have
you ever been to Brqa?” he asked his Captain.
“Yes. Dead.
Covered in bones, hence the expression. Why?”
“I see, the
fiends ate everything,” he said, rubbing a place on his flank.
“Something
like that. Just keep still, I’m taking a look at you,” said Jhl with a sigh.
“Um, sir,” she said somewhat belatedly to the Regent, “if you wouldn’t mind,
your men would be usefully deployed in seeing to Captain Marvel’s menagerie.”
“Vaporise
them,” advised BrTl, yawning. “Ow! Do
you have to?”
“Sorry,”
replied Jhl vaguely. “–That better?”
“Yes.
Thanks. Can you do anything about the taste?”
“No. Try a
basin of iirouelli’i juice.”
“I might do
that. Uh—well, shall we go?”
“Yes. Pick
me up.”
Emanating
mild surprise, BrTl picked her up and put her on his back behind the crested
one.
“Was that
the Regent?” said paxeR in a squeak.
“Uh—galloping grqwary gizzards,” she muttered. “Um, yeah.”
“Bored.
Wanted a diversion?” offered BrTl unconvincingly. “Better say goodbye.” He went
over to where Rh’aiiy’hn was now supervising the capture of the oorlp. “Watch
out, sir, it’ll kick. I’d say it was half-starved.”
“Yes, sir:
they’re all more than half-starved!” said Jhl loudly from her elevated
position.
“I see,”
said Rh’aiiy’hn, looking up at her anxiously.
“Vaporise them,”
repeated BrTl laconically, dropping the “sir” bit.
“We have a
very humane little zoo near the Central Botanic Gardens,” he murmured.
“I’d
vaporise ’em,” he said sourly.
“Sir, he’s
tired,” explained Jhl feebly, feeling paxeR becoming agitated.
“Of course.
Are you sure you don’t need transport back to your ship?”
“No, thank
you, sir. And, er, thank you for coming.” –A faint echo of the thanks came from
paxeR.
“Not at
all,” said Rh’aiiy’hn formally.
I’m leaving, said Jhl in his head. She
felt rather than saw him turn pale. “Goodnight, sir,” she said aloud.
“Goodbye,”
said Rh’aiiy’hn tightly “Goodbye, Lieutenant.”
“Goodnight,
sir,” replied BrTl, saluting.
He just
managed not to yawn until they were more or less out of the Regent’s presence.
“We’re
leaving tomorrow,” said Jhl grimly. “Don’t plan on sleeping in.”
“Good,” he
replied simply. “I’ll gallop. Well, lope.”
“Do that.”
He loped.
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