News From The Back Of Blerrinbrig's

12

News From The Back Of Blerrinbrig’s

    The prisoner’s calls were discernible when they were still a good way from their destination. He wasn’t making much sense, but it was obvious he was calling for help. His encoding was obvious, too—at least, it was to Jhl. She wondered fleetingly that the man at her side hadn’t realised— Had he? No, never. The information was available to him, only he didn’t know how to look for it. Well, the Course would take care of that, the minute the Old Rthfrdians were in the Fed— Vvlvanian curses, she couldn’t concentrate! Must be the aftereffects of the klupf. She closed her mind to the prisoner’s calls for help: she couldn’t do anything about him at this minute, and sending a message in reply to reassure him might be the kind thing to do but it would also be blitheringly stupid.

    At the lodge she assented absently to Drouwh's anxious suggestion that she might like to lie down on her bed, and went up to it, thinking hard.

    Two days later Drouwh, having driven over to the Manor in his ground-car and winkled R’rt Fh’laiin out of the company of the copper-haired young lady, whom he appeared to be keeping amused while his uncle was fishing, said grimly: “I can’t tell you how I know she’s different. There’s been nothing specific—and her mind seems just the same as ever—but I know she is.”

    “Rubbish: you’re just getting edgy,” he drawled.

    “Quite possibly I am getting edgy,” returned Drouwh between his teeth, “but that has nothing to do with it. She’s changed.”

    R’rt Fh’laiin gave him a bored look.

    “Well, for one thing, she’s talking less!” he said exasperatedly.

    “Struck dumb by the glory of Mh’aii’rhi Roz in mauve,” he drawled.

    “Very amusing, R’rt Fh’laiin.”

    “Even if she is talking less, and it’s not just your imagination, does that necessarily imply she’s thinking more?"

    “It does if she’s a Feddo spy. And before you say anything, what else can she be?”

    R’rt Fh’laiin hesitated. Then he admitted: “Well, I must say I have been thinking it over... I don’t think it can be a coincidence that she landed on your doorstep at that precise moment. But whether she's a Feddo spy—”

    “She knows a megazillion things that only a Feddo would know!” he said impatiently.

    R’rt Fh’laiin's narrow mouth twitched. “You said ‘megazillion’,” he murmured.

    “SO?” bellowed Drouwh.

    “Catching, is it? Or do you want to be right up with the play the minute we enter the Fed— No, all right,” he said with a groan. “I will be good. I agree she’s a Feddo, but is she spying for them, necessarily? She could be spying for the Regent’s lot or for Fh’Ly’haiyn and Rh’n’lhd.”

    “Rh’aiiy’hn would never hire a Feddo spy, are you mad as well as totally unconscious of every single thing that’s been happening here over the last fifteen years?” retorted Drouwh angrily. “He’s utterly opposed to any Feddo involvement in home affairs!”

    “Including tourist hotels in the Lower Cwmb, isn’t it?” he drawled.

    “Lower Frwm, if you mean Shn’aillaigh’s, and the South Cwmb if you mean mine. And if you won’t take this seriously, I’m going home!”

    “Don’t do that, Uncle Rh’uissh should be back at any minute with fish for lunch. No, sit down, y’fool! I’m ready to listen, but I can’t see any solution to it, except to get rid of the girl.” His eye brightened. “Look, give her to me!”

    Drouwh sat down, but pointed out caustically: “She isn’t a genuine Pleasure Girl. She’d be through those layers of hggl wool you keep between your ears and out the other side before the cat could lick its arse.”

    “Graphic,” he said, raising his crooked eyebrows.

    Drouwh shrugged impatiently.

    “Well,” said R’rt Fh’laiin pacifically, “it’s more likely she’s been hired by old Fh’Ly’haiyn and Rh’n’lhd than sent here by the Feddos, don’t you think?”

    “Uh—no,” said Drouwh in an odd voice.

    R’rt Fh’laiin bent forward. “Look, Drouwh, if you won’t tell me the facts, how in the name of the old gods can I give you any informed advice?”

    “Sorry. Uh—it’s the pwld,” he admitted.

    “Oh, of course!” said his friend with huge irony. “The Feddos have found a way to transmute it into xrillion, that’ll be it!”

    Drouwh chewed his lip. “Mm. Something very like it.”

    “WHAT?” screamed R’rt Fh’laiin.

    “Not into xrillion, of course. It’s a very new application and it can only be done to pre-processed pwld of the sort we have here. And it needs blob technology. –I mean culturing,” he corrected himself on a sour note.

    R’rt Fh’laiin gaped at him. “And?”

    “Look, it’s beyond me, R’rt Fh’laiin, I haven’t got a Third School degree!” he said heatedly. “But it’s something to do with hyper-hops. The hyperblobs can use it to—to— I don’t know. Not make the hop faster, exactly... Um, well, say you had a very heavy cargo of—of anything, really, say vacuum-frozen grpplybeast meat, that you wanted transported to, uh, a long way away. Normally you’d have it loaded into a trader ship and pay a fortune for them to use their hyperdrive and get it there in a decent time.”

    “And?” he said numbly.

    Drouwh made a face. “This is only my simple-minded interpretation of it, you know. Well, as things stand now, you could pay a zillion times the price of delivery by hyperdrive and hire a ship that can sustain hyper-hop and have the cargo unloaded while it’s in—um—hop. But no-one but an idiot would dream of doing that. Quite apart from the expense, how many cargo vessels can sustain that state long enough to get a heavy cargo unloaded?"

    After a moment R’rt Fh’laiin said: “By the bears, do you mean they can use pwld to prolong hyper-hop?”

    “Better than that,” said Drouwh, swallowing. “Hyperblobs can use it to transport the cargo from A to B virtually instantaneously.”

    “Bears’ claws,” he said numbly.

    “Yes. It’s not its chemical or physical properties, it’s—it’s something else,” he said lamely.

    After a moment R’rt Fh’laiin said weakly: “It’s been hushed up pretty well, hasn’t it?”

    “Yes. A big Feddo consortium owns the patent rights to the process, and the Intergalactic Minerals Commission has issued them with a licence to mine pwld here. –In return for a guaranteed fifty-percent share of the profit for the first hundred IG years, is how these things seem to work,” he said with a grimace.

    R’rt Fh’laiin tottered over to the sideboard and poured himself a shot of uissh, even though it was barely mid-morning. He downed it in one gulp, shuddering. He then poured a shot for Drouwh, and a second for himself. “I see,” he said with a sigh. “I might have known that devious mind of yours had some long-term goal unconnected with charitable employment in cursed pwld-working plants down in the Cwmbs!”

    “You might have, certainly, if you hadn’t been entranced by this popular misconception that I’m some sort of woolly-minded philanthropist like Rh’aiiy’hn,” he agreed drily.

    His old friend looked at him uncertainly.

    “All right, I’m not some sort of mega-capitalist, either: my miners and foundry workers are doing cursed well out of it!” he said crossly. “And their rights are protected for the future, whatever happens. Well, I’ve gone as far as is humanly possibly to protect them.” He sighed, and rubbed a hand over his face.

    “Yes. So—so you think Roz could be spying for some Feddo interest on the scent of the pwld process?” said R’rt Fh’laiin.

    “It seems the likeliest option. Not an industrial spy; I think it’s more likely she’s been sent to see whether I can be manipulated.”

    “Yes... Drouwh, this will revolutionise the whole system of freightage throughout the two galaxies!” he said in a shaken voice. “Trader ships will become completely obsolete!”

    “Eventually, yes. Not immediately, of course: it’ll be pretty cursed dear to start with. But it will allow those who can afford it to corner the markets in various forms of fine produce.” He shrugged a little. “Our mn-mns should do well: shipping them so as they arrive in a decent condition has been the big problem. This way, they can arrive literally as fresh as the instant they were dispatched.”

    “Aye. Drouwh, how in the name of the two Rthfrdias did you get involved?”

    “I can tell you how, but I’m cursed if I can figure out why,” replied Drouwh frankly. “If I’d been the Feddo consortium I wouldn’t have let a mere FW pwld-rights owner in on it. I’d have conned the poor idiot into believing that I was going to make useful objects from it—khyai’llh-shakers or some such—and bought the rights for a song.”

    “Well, quite!”

    Drouwh shrugged. “Don’t ask me why they didn’t. They were quite up-front about it. Their representative approached me initially not long before we went into Pre-Fed with an offer of partnership. And before you ask, yes, I did try to probe his mind, but all I got was a very sarcastic recital of some cursed archaic moral code the lordship class of Whtyll apparently still purports to follow!"

    “Oh. Oh, I see, he was a Whtyllian?”

    “Yes. It’s a Whtyllian-Mklontian consortium. This fellow was under cover as some sort of diplomat attached to the umpteenth Feddo delegation inspecting the something-or-other.”

    There was a short silence.

    “Old gods, why didn’t you tell me?”

    “You don’t own any pwld-bearing land, old fellow.”

    “That isn’t the point!” cried R’rt Fh’laiin, very angrily.

    Drouwh saw that it wasn’t, and that his friend was deeply hurt. “I know—I’m sorry. But the fewer heads that knew about it, the better,” he said apologetically.

    “Oh. Anyone with mind-powers could have picked it up from me: right.”

    “Mm.”

    R’rt Fh’laiin swallowed. “It does seem terribly likely that Roz is here because of this; I mean, if it’s worth a fortune... She might even be here to assassinate you.”

    “I wondered that, but I don’t think it’s likely. My interest in the venture wouldn’t revert to the consortium.”

    “Even so, I’d watch my back, if I were you!”

    “I am. And my mind. Only... I’m beginning to wonder if she hasn’t been right through my head and out again,” he admitted.

    “You have really tried to see what’s going on in her mind, have you?"

    “Yes,” said Drouwh, rubbing his hand over his face. “I’ve cursed near exhausted myself, trying. All I’m picking up is exactly the same as before. There doesn’t appear to be any shield, or… It’s so nebulous; I haven’t mentioned it to anybody but you.”

    Silence fell.

    “No,” said Drouwh eventually.

    R’rt Fh’laiin flushed. “Normally I wouldn’t, but—”

    “I wouldn’t kill a dog without proof,” he said tightly. “She may just be a simple-minded girl running away from persecution.”

    “She may just be running away from persecution, but she’s not simple-minded: last time I was over at the lodge she was explaining looped space to young T'm!”

    Drouwh smiled a little. “Mm. They watch the Feddo Encyclopaedia together for hours.”

    R’rt Fh’laiin stared at him. “By the bears, you’ve fallen for the girl!” he choked.

    Drouwh stood up abruptly. “Rubbish,” he said tightly, striding out before his friend could so much as press him to stay for the fish.

    It was very simple, really. What she was here for was to locate “Rhan.” Well, she’d done that. Now all she had to do was let Trff know. Easy as falling on a flop couch: lower her shield. Jhl went out into the vehicle paddock, scowling. One of the clansmen immediately came over to her and warned her not to go into the forest: it wasn’t safe. Jhl replied with a simper that she was only going as far as the wall. She walked slowly down to it and sat on it in the morning sun.

    Okay, so say she let Trff know that the so-called Rhan was found. What then? Lordship The High and Mighty Mk-L’ster came down on her like an IG ton of mok shit, that was what. For let us not forget, thought Jhl grimly, staring unseeingly before her, that I can’t tell when or if Trff may have picked me up! Lovely.

    The rights and wrongs of the case, of course, were not her concern. At least, that was what Shank’yar Vt R’aam had led her to suppose, and by the bones of Brqa she wasn’t going to argue with him! Okay, so there were two full sons, not one, but— No. Not her concern. ...What in Federation was he playing at? Why bother to keep the truth from her? Jhl had been over this only approximately a megazillion times in the last two days so there was little point in speculating, really. She kept telling herself.

    Well, say she went and did it. And say Trff picked her up. Where did that leave Rhan? Exactly where he was, helpless and incarcerated. So, supposing she... Well, just to take a hypothetical suppose: suppose she got him out of the place and got whatever primmo muck it was they were feeding the poor character out of his system, what then? Then he goes off to Wh’sh-fh’r and denounces Drouwh. And? Jhl scratched her head.

    Uh—sorry, she sent, as the mini-web withdrew itself hurriedly. She stopped scratching her head. It was Vvlvanian-cursed complicated, being a lady!

    Well, say Rhan’s back in power and presumably the boy Ruler’s out from under the influence of the conservative Palace clique. That means Drouwh’s helpless and incarcerated, along with R’rt Fh’laiin and Sh’n M’Klui’shke’aigh and all the conspirators. Gee, talk about turning the tables! Uh… options? She could manage transport, so… take Rhan down to this Southern Continent they went on about and leave him there to cool his heels until the Referendum was over? That’d mean Drouwh’s lot were left in a position of strength: very fair, really.

    No, what she really needed to do was immobilise the lot of them! No advantage to any side!

    Keep out of it, Smt Wong, she told herself grimly. Not your affair. You had to locate this Rhan: you’ve done that; the next move is up to Shank’yar. Helpless as a baby: yes, quite.

    Would it even be possible to immobilise the lot of them? Jhl doubted it. Shan at his peak would have been capable of it, yes: thrown some sort of mind-ring around them. Only she wasn’t up to that. At a pinch she might manage to control both Drouwh and Rhan; only not if the Regent’s powers were more developed than his half-brother’s. How old was he, again? Fortyish in Bluellian years? Ugh. That would have given him time to find out a fair bit about himself. Not that Drouwh Mk-L’ster in thirty-two years seemed to have managed much. But then, he appeared to have been so busy rushing round keeping his estates in order, setting up this, that, and the other enterpr—

    Which reminded her: this pwld shit that she’d found all nice and clean and sparkling in what the poor sap imagined was the recesses of his mind: a Whtyllian-Mklontian Anonymous Consortium? Ho, ho, ho. And Happy Galaxy to you, too. Must be that wrinkled old Fth W’ip IV that Shan had had staying at the Vvlvanian-cursed nirvana garden that time, what other reason would he have but the cash nexus for cosying up to a being that stank that much? And ate that much: even for an elderly Mklontian of enormous size he had got through stupendous amounts of rose petal salad, rose petal jam and, very unfortunately, curried mok liver. Shan had had to have a special kitchen built to handle it, because of the stink, and had had to hire a native Mklontian to cook in it, because none of his s-beings would, even under pain of death, and after the party he’d had to have the whole kitchen vaporised. Some beings on the estate had maintained that he should have vaporised the Mklontian cook as well, but Jhl wouldn’t have gone that far—quite. Well, W’ip IV was reputed to be one of the richest beings in the two galaxies, and she knew of nothing that would cause her to question this hypothesis. Or even bother to test it, actually: the old stinker had arrived not only in the latest model Moodra Dyhillia, which she had more or less expected, but with two other Moodras following along behind to hold respectively his baggage and a spare load of rose petals. In case he got peckish in the night, yeah.

    Yes, well, forget about all that: the point was that Shan’s interest in Old Rthfrdia was not merely a paternal one. Actually, this came as no surprise, in fact it came as a sort of relief: if he had merely been worried about his son, Jhl felt uneasily, he wouldn’t have been the Shank’yar she thought she knew...

    Never mind that. And for the megazillion and fifth time, there was no point in speculating why he had told her about one son and not the other! ...Had the terms of the mission sort of implied that she ought to hoik Rhan out of whatever mok shit he was in? No. Well, explicitly they hadn’t, but had there been that implication? Jhl tried to remember exactly what the Fleet Commander had said but infuriatingly all she got was a fuzzy picture of Shan in gauzy zpandria-cloth. Vvlvanian curses: must be the klupf, again. After a certain period of fruitless speculation, which made it a megazillion and six, if any being was counting, she went back to brooding about whether she ought to make an effort to immobilise both Rhan and Drouwh, which’d be fair, or merely concentrate on hoiking Rhan out of it. That was pretty fruitless, too.

    Eventually she came to with a jump and realised that time was a-wasting and that while Drouwh was off at the Manor she could let down her shield, and that she should have done so as soon as she was sure he was out of range: Vvlvanian curses! She let her shield down but kept a careful watch for the first indication of Drouwh’s return.

    In the attic room, Rh’aiiy’hn of Old Rthfrdia gasped, and clutched his head. Fuzzy though he was, he realised that this new, powerful mind wasn’t sending to him, it was... reaching out? He tried in vain to contact it, though he was no longer sure why he was calling for help, he just knew that he had to keep sending. But he couldn’t feel any response at all. He kept trying but eventually, although he was unaware of it, tears of disappointment and frustration began to slip down his golden cheeks.

    K’t-Ln sat bolt upright and clutched her head. Simultaneously Stripey, on the end of her bed, let out a startled mew. Gradually her cheeks whitened. “I knew it,” she muttered under her breath. “She’s a Feddo spy!” She put her hands over her ears, but it didn’t shut out the noise. Eventually she put her head under the pillow and pulled the pillow down with both hands, but the noise in her head was as loud as ever.

    M’ri and A’ailh’sa were in the downstairs the sitting-room. “I’ve got an awful headache,” admitted M’ri in a small voice, laying down her embroidery.

    “So have I,” A’ailh’sa agreed. “I feel a bit sick, too. I wonder if we’re in for a thunderstorm?” She went to the window and peered, but the sky was light blue, dotted with white clouds. “It doesn’t look like it.”

    M’ri got up. “I think I’ll make some khyai’llh tea. Would you like some?”

    “No,” said A’ailh’sa, making a face, “but I’ll have some.”

    T’m and T’m’s Kitten were all by themselves in the little room where The Mk-L’ster had put the sim-receiver. The sim-image shivered as T’m gasped and clutched his head and T’m’s Kitten, with a startled mew, dug all its claws into his thighs. T’m barely noticed, the messages in his head were so loud.

    At first he was entirely bewildered by the phenomenon, and his mind was almost deafened, it was like someone was shouting very loud inside his head. But eventually he struggled to the realisation that it wasn’t K’t-Ln, she was quite different, and M’ri could hardly send at all, it wasn’t her, and, though he’d only heard The Mk-L’ster a couple of times when he was very angry with someone, it wasn’t The Lord, either. And it definitely wasn’t the man upstairs, he only sent the same message, like “Help,” very loud, and after a while you learned to turn it off in your head. He had never realised Roz could send, though he knew she was very clever and knew in great detail things that even the Feddo Encyclopaedia only explained briefly, but he was quite certain it must be her. He didn’t understand why she was broadcasting all this kna shit about The Lord and the prisoner in the attic, but he knew she shouldn't be.

    T’m sat there in front of the Encyclopaedia, no longer seeing it, mechanically stroking his little cat, murmuring: “It’s all right, T'm’s Kitten, she won’t hurt us,”—not sure it was the truth—his freckles standing out starkly, more scared than he had ever been except the first time K’t-Ln had made him glide.

    After a long, long time T’m’s Kitten began to purr.

    “She’s stopped,” he croaked. He got up, picking up T’m’s Kitten carefully. His legs felt all funny. He went slowly up to K’t-Ln's room on his funny legs, hugging his cat.

    No sooner had Jhl raised her shield again than she realised she’d made a blitheringly stupid mistake. Asteroid-brain! Of course the kids must have been able to hear her: to their fresh young minds she must have been as loud as—as Njneeainwearia in the mating season—if you could call what the crystal forms did “mating.” Well, there was only one thing for it. Only she’d never tried to manipulate another being’s memory store before, and she wasn’t too plasmo-blasted sure she could. Quite apart from the fact that it was IG-illegal and if she was ever found out she’d end up mining the magma pits of Vvlvania for life, there was the considerable risk of killing the beings she tried it on. Especially the being she tried it on first.

    Jhl found she was grimacing and chewing her knuckles. She stopped hurriedly, that wasn’t the sort of thing done by inane Pleasure Girls sitting in the sunshine because they had nothing better to do while their master was out. K’t-Ln or little T’m? Her inclination was to go for the girl first: although K’t-Ln’s leg had immobilised her, she was more cunning than the boy, more determined, and older. Only it was hardly the kid’s fault that she’d picked up the broadcasting of an intergalactic clown with a mind fuddled by klupf fumes.

    There was, of course, a third option. Swallowing hard, Jhl entered the mind of the little cat.

    T’m and T’m’s Kitten were both sitting on K’t-Ln’s bed while K’t-Ln tried to decide what to do. T’m gave a scream as T’m’s Kitten rolled over on its back with its paws in the air and lay there rigid.

    K’t-Ln had only time to say: “It’s her!” before the little cat sat up and began to wash.

    “T’m’s Kitten, are you all right?" cried T’m, stark white behind the freckles, tears pouring down his cheeks. He put his face down very close and touched his head to his cat’s forehead. “He’s forgotten,” he reported to K’t-Ln in a shaken voice.

    K’t-Ln was as white as he was. “Forgotten he was dead?” she returned harshly.

    “No—yes. I mean, he can’t remember hearing her!”

    “She’s done something to him!” cried K’t-Ln furiously.

    T’m gulped. “He was dead, wasn’t he?” he said in a tiny voice.

    “Yes: I couldn’t hear him any more,” she said grimly.

    There was a short pause.

    “Well, he’s all right, now,” said K’t-Ln weakly.

    T’m nodded, looking at her uncertainly.

    K’t-Ln’s colour had begun to return with her anger at what the Pleasure Girl had done, only now it suddenly faded right out. “Get me a slate,” she said tensely.

    “She’s gonna do it to us, isn’t she?” he whispered.

    “Get me a SLATE!” she shouted furiously.

    T’m got up on legs that had gone funny again and fetched her a fresh slate from the table at the other side of the room.

    K’t-Ln licked her slate pencil. Tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, she wrote: “Mk-L’ster: Roz was br—” Then she passed out.

    T’m gave a terrified scream. Then he passed out.

    Jhl sat on the old stone wall, shaking and sweating. Stage One was over. They were unconscious, but not dead. Well, at least she knew where she’d gone wrong with the kitten. Just as well The Old Woman had given it extraordinary recuperative powers, or she wouldn’t have had much hope of reviving it. Now that she’d been inside its tiny bright head she was pretty sure that The Old Woman was using it as a long-range probe to keep watch on the lot of them. For what, Federation only knew.

    Gingerly she probed K’t-Ln’s memory store. Some beings were capable of burying a specific memory until they wanted it to resurface, but Jhl didn’t imagine she could manage that. She erased it completely. There were a few nasty ones that she was tempted to erase, too, poor kid—though that would have been so IG-illegal that it would have incurred the ultimate penalty of having her own memory store erased permanently in a Mullgon’yan nursing-home. But more important, it would have infringed what the Bluellian Jhl perceived as K’t-Ln’s inalienable being-rights; so she didn’t. She withdrew, only hazily aware that she had performed an operation that was supposedly achievable only by Full Surgeons of twenty IG years’ experience.

    Doing the boy was much easier: she found the place almost immediately: not merely because, as she now began to perceive, the structure of his mind was very like K’t-Ln’s, but because it was very like that of any mammalian. She had never bothered to look round another being’s mind before, having used her powers only for the limited amount of reading required for self-preservation, but now she browsed for an appreciable time. Whether all the time she’d spent in Shank’yar’s mind was a factor, she wasn’t sure, but by the time she withdrew from T’m’s mind, having explored it very fully, she was aware that a new power had flowered in her.

    But as to what she might do with this new power—! Her qualifications would count as credits for the first two years of the ten IG years’ Full Surgeon training, but dealing only with sick minds would be cursed boring. Besides, she was no do-gooder, never had been. In fact, she was a being of action: why was she brooding over her vacuum-frozen mind-powers? Megazillions of beings had ’em, she wasn’t unique!

    She jumped off the wall and, denying angrily to herself the fact that her legs felt a bit shaky, went over to the clansman on guard and asked if he thought it would be all right if she went down the track just a little way to wait for The Lord—simper, simper. He thought it would be all right, so she went down the rough road as far as the first bend, where, on sight of a fallen log, her knees inexplicably gave way entirely and she sank down onto it, shaking all over.

    “What were we doing?” said K’t-Ln, yawning.

    “Dunno,” replied T’m, also yawning.

    “Must’ve dropped off—you wanna open a window?” she said, yawning again.

    He opened a window and said: “I’m awfully hungry. Is it lunchtime yet?"

    “M’ri won’t serve it up until he’s back. Can you hear the ground-car?”

    T’m hung out of the window. “No-o... I can hear him!” he reported pleasedly.

    K’t-Ln concentrated. “Yeah. Good, go and tell M’ri she can start serving it up.”

    T’m hurried off to find M'ri.

    K’t-Ln picked up her slate and looked at it blankly. “Mk-L’ster: Roz was br,” what did that mean? She shrugged, and wiped it out.

    “Oh, yes, very good news!” said BrTl cordially across the hyper-loop.

    “It thought it was,” returned Trff uncertainly. “She-it is her-itself again.”

    “You’ve just explained at great and unnecessary length that she isn’t!” he cried.

    “You-it’s blown poor Fl’Oo-ooueroii across the bridge."

    BrTl looked round. So he had. “Sorry, Fl’Oo-ooueroii.”

    “Not at all, Great BrTl!” the Flppu gasped, picking itself up. “I’m getting used to it, it’s quite invigorating,” it added ingratiatingly.

    BrTl gave it a hard look but not before it had added: “A spot of juice—”

    “NO!” he roared, not caring whether it shot across the bridge again or not. “Listen, Trff, this is even worse than the last scenario! Never mind unlikely bond-partnering with even more unlikely sons: is a being with superior mind-powers going to want to go on jauntering round the Universe with two intergalactic clowns?”

    “It has superior mind-powers,” it said cautiously.

    “You-it is a superior intergalactic clown!” he shouted.

    “BrTl, don’t,” it said as a low, growly whine then came over the loop in hyperspace.

    “I’m NOT!” he shouted.

    “Yes, you-it is. Why else would Fl’Oo-ooueroii be stroking your-its tail?”

    BrTl lashed his tail crossly and the Flppu shot across the bridge yet again.

    “A Flppu’s capable of a considerable amount of empathy. It’s one of the factors that most differentiate them from blobs, of course.”

    “That and the fact that they can eat, drink, sleep and excrete, yes!” cried BrTl loudly.

    “Those are several facts. Though quite possibly related."

    BrTl took a deep breath. “Didn’t I ask you-it a question?”

    “It thought it was rhetorical. Sorry!” it said quickly. “The it-being is of the opinion that though her-its loyalty to her-its ship-companions may predispose her-it to wish to keep on what you-it said, um—she-it probably won’t want to, no,” it ended glumly.

    BrTl took a deep breath. “Not that it will matter in any case, will it?” he noted. “Because, if I understood you-it rightly, the culturing—don’t bother to correct me, thanks—the culturing of the pwld muck from You-Know-Where is going to make the whole concept of freight-carrying redundant, isn’t it?”

    “Obsolete, certainly. At least insofar as freight routes within the two gal—”

    “WELL, WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE US?” he bellowed.

    “Head-first down a magma pit under an IG ton of mok shit,” said Trff quickly.

    “Ooh, goody, you’ve noticed!”

    “BrTl, it will take a considerable time, in terms of the commonly perceived space-time continuum,” it said, ignoring the sound of BrTl grinding his teeth across a loop in hyperspace, “for the two galaxies to adjust to the new transportation system and for the culturing to be done in sufficiently large quantities to make it the most practicable form of transport.”

    “Like, fifty IG years?” he suggested politely.

    “Much less than that,” returned Trff in mild surprise.

    “EXACTLY!” he shouted.

    Trff didn’t reply. After some time BrTl said cautiously: “Are you still there?”'

    “Of course.”

    BrTl didn’t for a split IG microsecond imagine that it meant what he meant, but since it had answered him, which was all he’d wanted, he didn’t bother to argue the point. “Well, we seem to have come a considerable way—metaphorically speaking,” he added nastily, “in the last few moments, don’t we? Our jobs have been blasted out from under us, and even if they hadn’t been Jhl isn’t going to want to come back to her old life, and even if she did it would hardly matter, because she’s stuck on vacuum-frozen You-Know-Where under a you-know-what web, at the mercy of a clutch of vacuum-frozen asteroid-heads of lordships!”

    “There’s no need for all this circumlocution, the hyper-hop loop’s formed from—”

    “I DON'T WANT TO KNOW!” he roared.

    A faint message of ...and your-its brain-waves came across the loop in hyperspace but BrTl pretended to himself he hadn't heard it. Stomach-turning, some of the muck these engineers had to learn. Explained why only beings with engineering minds ever went in for it.

    After a moment Trff asked cautiously: “What’s you-it going to do now?"

    “What can I do, there’s something like sixty IG days left before Federation Day!” he replied bitterly. “I’ll just get on with polishing my Grand Occasion Saddle, I suppose!”

    “Good idea. It’ll come and join you-it.”

    “There is the small fact of the persona represented as we communicate by the body-weight of a certain blue fluffy one,” he noted acidly.

    “Yes, this it-being’s new persona could come aboard your-its ship to visit that it-being.”

    “No, it couldn’t, because I’m NOT ME and therefore Fl’Oo-ooueroii can’t be YOU!” shouted BrTl. “And oy, I don’t suppose a fibre or two happened to pick up an emanation from a certain Great Lord about who’s supposed to be who at this juncture, or any related topic, before he started drivelling like an infant?”

    There was an infinitesimal pause. “The we-it is of the opinion that you-it possibly means ‘dribbling,’ in the case of a mammalian inf— Sorry. It didn’t pick up a thing.”

    “Ooh, goody! In that case you’d better come aboard to meet my Flppu because you've developed a fascination with the mind processes of Flppus.”

    “It has,” it said in surprise.

    “YES! Not you-it, asteroid-brain, the it you’re meant to be!”

    “Oh: the Slp-Og V. Slgg. Yes, that’s not impossible.”

    “Yeah. Think of any excuse, it doesn’t matter,” he groaned. “–Slgg?” he added weakly.

    “Yes, BrJk?” it responded politely.

    “I’m NOT PRACTISING!” he roared. “SHUT UP!” he screamed as Fl’Oo-ooueroii’s voice said in disappointed tones in the background: “Oh, I thought you were, Great BrJk. Tell the Great One I’m getting very good at it!”

    BrTl took a deep breath. “Fl’Oo-ooueroii wants you to know,” he said with huge restraint, “that it’s getting very good at remembering to call me BrJk. It only forgets sixty-eight percent of the time, now. –Good, it’s pushed off,” he added evilly.

    “It’ll have to have a new name, too,” Trff noted.

    “Think of one,” he replied sourly.

    “Fl’Mnn-nnlluyii,” it responded promptly.

    Friyrian for Blue Flppu. “Lovely. Now think of a way to get it into its solid blue brain and KEEP IT THERE!”

    “It’ll have to come aboard and—and do something about it,” it said weakly.

    “Yeah. And by the way, get me a new IG ID for it, would you-it?” he added evilly.

    There was a tiny plop and a new ID disc appeared on the floor of the bridge. BrTl picked it up and blinked at it. It was blank.

    “This is blank,” he said in a voice that came out a lot, lot weaker than he’d meant it to.

    “Yes. It has to be blank to come through the hyper-loop non-continuous— Sorry. Think ‘Fl’Mnn-nnlluyii’ at it with your-its shades lowered.”

    BrTl did.

    “Now blink at it,” said Trff

    He did. Fl’Mnn-nnlluyii reported the disc.

    “Good; now, to get it onto it, you-it’ll have to put it to sleep,” said Trff.

    “Me?” he gulped.

    “There’s no other being there, BrTl. And unfortunately it can’t be done through the hyper-loop because of the incompatibility of the looped vRaa waves with the sg-Jwkli effect. Not when you-it’s in a ship with minus-velocity to a power of less than 4,000 percent. Well, of course Blerrinbrig’s factor is in there, too.”

    “Yeah, of course,” he sighed.

    “Once you-it’s put it to sleep you-it can get a hyperblob to do the rest.”

    “Oh, that’ll be easy, I’ll just turn off the hyperdrive!” he noted airily.

    “Yes.”

    “In hyper-hop?” he croaked.

    “Yes. It will maintain the hop.”

    “Um—well, how do I put it to sleep?” he said weakly.

    There was an infinitesimal pause and then Trff said apologetically: “BrTl, the we-it thinks that you-it should be given this knowledge only for this single occasion.”

    “Look, I’ve seen Vvlvanian-cursed jugglers on Quarvaynia put any being you care to name to sleep with a mere blink of a shade!” he cried.

    “That was a very simple form of hypnotism. And it works only on the A-V factor of the xathpyroid mind or the T-K factor of the mammalian mind. –That’s why T-K fronds are so popular with humanoids as sleeping-pillows,” it explained kindly.

    “Never mind, never mind. Give me the knowledge on the understanding that you take it away once I’ve used it,” he sighed.

    Trff did, and he got on with it. The whole experience was so revolting that BrTl could only be glad he was going to lose the knowledge again. “Oy, is this anything like what Jhl’s discovered she’s got?” he asked suspiciously.

    “Er... very, very generally speaking, yes.”

    “Ye-ech! Look, Trff, if I’ve gone far enough, just let me stop, will you?”

    “Not yet. Go and get a hyperblob. A good one."

    “Like this?” he groaned.

    “Yes, the blob has to know that you-it knows what you-it’s doing.”

    “But I DON'T!” he shouted.

    “Yes, you-it does.”

    BrTl thought about it. Steaming piles of mok droppings, so he did! He went moodily off to the hyperdrive. The hatch opened before he'd barely begun to formulate the thought, so he must have been pretty well Trffified, all right. He turned the drive off by merely sending Off, and retrieved an excellent one. “You and me could go places,” he noted to it sourly.

    The hyperblob immediately produced a great string of equations that neatly detailed the places they could go, both in the two galaxies and beyond, but as the Great BrTllian Brain had been conned into agreeing to give up its newly acquired powers, that didn’t go down too well. He stumped off to the bridge, attached the new disc to the Flppu, simultaneously retrieving the old one, and under orders, stumped back to the drive, replaced the blob, chucked the old disk down there, turned the drive On, closed the hatch, and retreated to the bridge.

    “Is you-it sitting comfortably?”

    “JUST DO IT!” he roared.

    Trff did it.

    BrTl felt his head cautiously.

    “How does you-it feel?”

    “I’ve got a headache,” he said grumpily. “Apart from that, hungry.”

    “Good. It’ll be with you-it fairly soon, in terms of the commonly perceived spa—”

    “YES!”

    “Don’t forget you-it doesn’t know it,” it reminded him anxiously.

    “Don’t forget you-it doesn’t know me,” he returned nastily.

    “No-o. Your-its new persona and its new persona haven’t met, but the we-it is aware of—”

    “Just keep it simple, will you, I’ve got a headache,” he groaned.

    “Yes. Oh, it sees: hah-hah,” it said politely.

    BrTl broke the connection on the spot.

    “Well, it’s definite confirmation that she’s found Rhan,” he said, tugging at his collar.

    “Yes,” agreed Lady Myr-Lah gh K’ml Vt R’aam.

    “Er—how is the Fleet Commander, my Lady?”

    “Crawling. –In humanoid terms, that means he’s growing up normally,” she said tiredly.

    “Oh, good,” he said, eyeing her nervously.

    “You had better tell me the rest,” she said grimly.

    “Um—well, how much do you know about the Fleet Commander’s companies?” he gulped.

    “No being can penetrate this room, Lieutenant BrTl, that is why we are in it.”

    “Oh—good. I like the green,” he said.

    “I believe you mentioned that on the occasion of your last visit, Lieutenant.”

    “Um—did I? Oh—yes. Um, well, it seems that D’ru-son owns some mineral rights that the Fleet Commander seems to be interested in. It’s some stuff called pwld.”

    The old lady’s eyebrows rose slowly. “I’ve never heard of it. Shall I look it up?”

    “No!” he gasped as she glanced over at a small sim-receiver.

    “I see,” she said grimly. “Get on with it.”

    “D’ru-son’s in a partnership with W-M, A.C., to dig the pwld up and process it.”

    “I don’t think I have ever heard of W-M, Lieutenant.”

    “It’s an Anonymous Consortium of a Whtyllian company and a Mklontian company. Jhl seems to be sure it’s one of the Fleet Commander's companies.”

    “I see.” She thought it over. “What will this pwld be used for?"

    He gulped, but told her the lot.

    “Good, possibly we shall get really fresh fruit in winter at long last,” she said acidly. “–Don’t look at me like that, Lieutenant, I’m not in my dotage yet. I can fully seize the implications of this development.” She frowned and murmured to herself: “I’d better sell the family out of Trans-G Haul & Carry, I suppose.”

    “No, don’t do that, my Lady, it may alert them!” he cried.

    “Whom?” she said, fixing him with the eye of a Gervaynian kryy about to swoop.

    “Um—well, any being! The IG Minerals Commission, mainly, I’d say,” he gulped.

    “Surely my son has a licence?”

    According to the scuttlebutt round the spaceports they only cost the equivalent of a Fleet Commander’s annual salary: Lord Vt R’aam of Whtyll would be able to afford several of them. Every IG month. “Yes, only it’s all highly confidential.”

    “Hm. You’re right, Lieutenant, no signs of activity at all will be the safest policy.”

    He nodded feelingly: it certainly would for Jhl, to Blerrinbrig’s with assorted consortia of Vvlvanian-cursed Whtyllian companies owned by You-Know-Who!

    She thanked him graciously for bringing her the news, and graciously dismissed him, owning that she didn’t see how it could affect his Captain’s position.

    Regretting that he’d ever offered the old she-mok first choice of his newly acquired cargo of T-K fronds, BrTl replied with great courtesy. “No, my Lady. And I don’t see how it can help your son’s position, either.” And went.

     Lady Myr-Lah was barely aware of the impertinence. She sat down, thinking hard. Not of Shank’yar’s progress, for once, but of such matters as mining licences, fresh fruit in winter, the Commodities Exchange, and the curious coincidence of the Full College’s wanting to acquire an interest in agricultural property on Old Rthfrdia...