Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Me? An Enemy?”

  “Yes, an Enemy of the Balderdash, whom the Sforza signed that agreement with. The Balderdash employed the Sforza Condottieri to take up arms against you.”

  “Maybe they did. But that doesn’t make it right.” Salvatore laughed. “Princess Hatari, you have practiced a deception on me. You are not in alliance with the Sforzas, as you claimed. Quite the contrary, they are in alliance against you.”

  Hatari looked prepared to argue the point. Then she shrugged and smiled quite charmingly. “Well, I had to do something. The question is now, what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” Sal said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “You should have told her it was no dice,” Toma said later when he and Sal were alone. “You know you can’t help her.”

  “I know. I just thought I could find an escape clause in the contract.”

  Sal put down the copy of it he’d had faxed from Central Universal Faxing. “But there’s just no doubt. She’s named as the Enemy. I have discretion in a lot of things, but not in this.”

  “Then you’ll just have to tell her,” Toma said.

  “All right, I know,” Sal said wearily. “Please call up the princess and tell her we’ll be right over. We have something urgent we must discuss with her.”

  “We, sir?”

  “What’s the matter? Is there any reason you shouldn’t come along?”

  “I was right in the middle of provision inventory.”

  “It can wait,” Sal said. He looked at Toma. The robot spider’s sidemost tentacles were drooping, and had turned from their normal healthy purple-red to a sickly green. Sal remembered that spider robots were extremely prone to melancholia, brought on by embarrassing double binds.

  “Oh, stay here,” Sal said. “I’ll do it myself.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sal put on his lightweight spacesuit and went to see the princess on her ship.

  Onboard, he was greeted by Kukri.

  “Greetings, Commander. You are most welcome.”

  “I’ve come to see the princess. Where is she?”

  Sal walked down the dusty corridors of the ship behind Kukri. He noticed the ship was an old Edison Explorer. The princess evidently could not afford anything better. There were original manufacturer’s marks on the cross-members, and on the tired old turbines. It occurred to him that the princess was really out on a limb.

  The storeroom was large and piled with equipment and baggage. On one side, a space had been cleared where the princess’s throne had been set up. It was a proper-looking throne, large and high-backed, covered in plush, with gargoyles carved into its arms.

  The princess was sitting forlornly on the throne. She was wearing a green robe of office and had a little coronet on her head. Despite her twenty-eight years she looked like a very unhappy little girl.

  “We always take our own thrones,” she told Sal.

  “But I’ll never get to use mine for real, will I?”

  “I don’t know,” Sal said. “Perhaps you can find some other place to rule. Go back to Excelsus, Princess. They will find another planet for you to rule.”

  “Oh, you just don’t understand.”

  “What is there to understand?”

  The princess leaned forward earnestly.

  “We get just one chance. There are new generations of ruler material on Excelsus always pushing behind us. We get a shot at one job. If we blow it, that’s it.”

  “What happens then? They won’t jail you, will they?”

  “No. There’s no punishment for failure to occupy a throne. But they’ll never use me again. My breeding and conditioning will go to waste. My internal programs will go haywire without people to rule. I can be sure to age rather quickly. And I’ll gain weight, the one thing I can’t afford to do.”

  “But what will you do? Where will you go?”

  “I’ll need to find some quiet planet where I can be a bag lady. It’s the standard other alternative for failed royalty. I hear that Earth has such positions open.”

  His heart went out to her.

  “Take it easy, Princess. Of course I’m going to help you.”

  “But you can’t! The Sforza contract . . .”

  “It won’t be the first time a Condottieri has made his own arrangements on the field of battle.”

  “But what will Sforza do to you?”

  “Don’t worry, I can handle him.”

  But of course that was a lie. He couldn’t handle Sforza at all. But he couldn’t turn the princess out to be a bag lady.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Salvatore explained to Dick Fogarty, his second-in command, that he had decided to help Princess Hatari occupy the throne of Melchior.

  “The men won’t like it, Sir,” Fogarty said.

  “Since when,” Salvatore asked, “do we care what the men like? They’re paid to fight, not to pass moral judgments.”

  “The moral part doesn’t concern them at all, Sir. The fact is, we work for Sforza and Sforza has a contract with the Balderdash.”

  “I gave my word to assist the princess before I knew of the contract.”

  “So?”

  “So that means I can, in all fairness, support her side”

  “But why would you want to? When Count Sforza hears about this, he’ll have your hide.”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  “It could mean our necks, too.”

  “Not if you follow the orders of your superior officer, who happens to be me.”

  “Sir, why are you doing this?”

  “I have my reasons,” Salvatore said. He wasn’t going to tell an ape like Fogarty about his boast to Alfonso, or about his own displeasure at still being a mere bubaldar at the age of sixteen. In fact, he was almost seventeen. That was long enough to hold inferior rank!

  “The Count will thank me for this in the end,” Sal said.

  “I don’t know,” Fogarty said. “It ain’t regular.”

  “I’ll let you despoil the Balderdash baggage ships if you continue to follow my orders.”

  “Hmm,” Fogarty thought it over. “Are the Balderdash very rich?”

  “Fabulously wealthy, it is said,” Sal said, hoping it was true.

  “And we keep it all? No nonsense about rules of war?”

  “The rules of this war are,” Sal said, “winner takes all. That’s us. We must give the Count his third, there can be no doubt of that. But the rest is for you and the lads.”

  “There’s money in a bit of rebellion, eh, sir?” said Dick.

  “More than you’ll see otherwise.”

  “We’ll follow you to hell and back for money,” Fogarty said. “To a mercenary, money is like religion.”

  “I’ll see that the worship is good,” Sal said. “Tell the men of the StarSwarm to prepare for a departure to Melchior within the hour. Tell the navigator to plan a course for us that is well clear of black holes. We don’t want to come out on the other side of Polaris. Set a

  Grade One Alert. And do it quick, mister!”

  “Aye, Sir!” Dick Fogarty said, overawed by the sudden cold precision of his small commander.

  §

  Soon thereafter, the fleet set sail for the attack on Melchior. The men cheered up at the prospect of fighting. They weren’t too upset about fighting against the orders of their employer and indenture holder, Count Sforza. Nobody likes a boss, especially when he practices parasitism upon bodies bought in the Rough Slave Market, as was the rumor concerning Sforza. There wasn’t a law against it, but it still made one feel sort of strange inside, working for a man like that. And anyhow, a good mercenary soldier was supposed to revolt against his own leaders from time to time. It was like a law of nature.

  And so the battleship Endymion set sail with its StarSwarm of smaller ships strapped down to its external vanes: the deadly Mini dreadnaughts; the quick-darting Truculents; and the shifty, unpredictable Neerdowells.

  CHAPTER TWELVE />
  The battleship Endymion was moving along toward Melchior, eating up the light-minutes and hours as it came to flank speed. The ship was already rigged for combat; repulsion screens were up and running, torpedo tubes were filled, and the long-distance radar pinged monotonously as the ship continued to accelerate through the close-packed stars that made up this region of Semiramis.

  The Endymion’s crew had not been put on full alert yet. The special troops who were to do the actual ground fighting—two regiments of the Second Sofia Infantry Brigade—were still in the refrigerated hold, motionless in their frozen slumber. Sal knew enough not to revive them too soon; combat troops were apt to rebel unless there was a fighting situation immediately before them.

  The princess remained aboard her own ship, which, secured to the Endymion‘s hull, was coming along for the ride.

  Sal had asked Toma to search out whatever he could about the Balderdash. The little spider robot worked at the computer for a while, then reported to the captain.

  “So what have you found out about the Balderdash?” Sal asked.

  “There are some mysteries about them,” Toma replied. “First mention I could find in the databases was when the Martin-Harris Expedition found them living a poverty-stricken life on Unk, one of the moons of Thoris Major. Unk was a small dark place, and at that time, the Balderdash were very primitive. They didn’t even possess reliable spaceships, since the solution to the O-ring problem of their antiquated propulsion systems had always eluded them.”

  “What are O-rings?” Sal asked. “Do we have them?”

  “No, we have moved far beyond that primitive technology. Our ships utilize W-rings, and we expect to move soon to X-rings. But these were not known back then.”

  “Go on,” Sal said. “What was it about the O-rings?”

  “They were always failing,” Toma said. “Consequently, the Balderdash ships didn’t dare go very far. When Martin questioned them about their lifestyle and beliefs, the answers they gave were so preposterous, so unlikely, so off the wall, so ill-thought out and poorly considered, so downright foolish, blockheaded and just plain wrong-minded, that Martin’s comment, at the end of his report, was a hastily scrawled ‘Balderdash!’ The commentators back at the Institute took that for their real name, and so it stuck.”

  “The expedition must have gotten the answers to some major questions about them,” Sal guessed.

  “Yes, but it left a few mysteries unanswered.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, for one thing, no one has ever seen them eating. It has been guessed that they do this in so messy a way as to gross out even themselves. For another they give signs of being partly plant in their physical makeup, sprouting leaves at certain times of year and then giving birth to certain monstrous fruit. This led to the thought that, unique among intelligent beings, they powered themselves through photosynthesis. But this was by no means certain.”

  “But what does that mean?” Sal asked.

  Toma shook his head. “Our scientists still have not decided. When, some years later, another expedition visited them, they found that the Balderdash had solved their O-ring problems and gone on to build quite respectable spaceships of considerable speed, using the Owens-Watkins Bilateral Sub-space Drive though they never paid patent fees for it. In a very short time they had become a fighting race, though not of a sort that is generally respected.

  “The Balderdash were cunning in battle, pretending to flee, then racing back to the attack in what was meant as a surprise move. Later they changed tactics when they found this surprised no one. Their ships were armed with long-range cannon and modified plasma torpedoes. They were known to be cruel, taking apart prisoners to see what made them tick and then putting them back together again in ingenious but shocking ways.”

  “Not nice people at all ” Sal said. “Do they still live on Unk?”

  Toma waved his tentacles in an emphatic negative gesture. “They destroyed Unk in a nuclear accident after stripping it of any minerals of value. They have been looking for a new homeland ever since. But nobody wants them for neighbors. They are slovenly, and leave a mess wherever they go. Also they are ugly, especially with their intricately folded mouths.”

  “Just like the Kukris,” Sal said. “They also are missing a planet.”

  Just then Dirty Dick Fogarty hurried into the room. “Commander! We have picked up a StarSwarm of armed ships just within radar range.”

  “See if you can raise them on radio,” Sal said. Fogarty adjusted the radio, his hairy fingers surprisingly delicate on the luminous dials. “They’re on Channel 2a22, Sir.”

  Sal turned to the channel and switched it on. “Hello,” a voice on the radio said, in Intergab. “Is anyone there?”

  “Who’s that?” Sal said. “Identify yourself, please”

  “I am Selfridge Summum Lorn, commander of this Space Armada of the Balderdash.”

  “What do you want?” Sal asked him. “I hope you’re not planning to try to stop me from going to Melchior.”

  “I had no such thought!” the commander said. “This battleship of yours. Is plenty big, no?”

  “Damn right, it’s big,” Sal said.

  “With many weapons, some of newfangled designs?”

  “We’re armed, and we’re coming through.”

  “Okay,” the Balderdash said. “Don’t get sore. We got no complaints. We’re not here to cause trouble. We’re just here to make sure things go okay. In fact, we have a present for you.”

  A midshipman hurried into the Command Room.

  “Small rocket-propelled object on the port bow, sir!”

  “Scan it for explosive potential,” Sal said.

  The midshipman hurried to a phone and spoke briskly to the Materials Inspection Officer down in the Assay Office. He listened to the replay, then said, “It is inert, sir.”

  “All right. Bring it aboard.”

  The present from the Balderdash was a package about four feet to a side, wrapped in gaily colored paper. “Can we unwrap it, sir?” the midshipman asked.

  “I suppose so,” Sal said.

  Swiftly they unwrapped the paper, folding it carefully back on itself, in the prescribed military manner for opening strange gifts. Beneath was a large box.

  Willing hands swiftly opened the box. From within, a cloud of yellowish smoke trickled out. Sal reached for the button that would activate the firefighting machinery, but the smoke soon ceased, and in its place, images danced in the lambent light of the ship’s Command Room. The images solidified into images of women, young and beautiful, scantily clad, and doing a kind of dance. The rest of the crew had crowded into the Command Room, and they watched the gyrations with every sign of pleasure.

  As they watched, Sal became aware of an odd and not unpleasant smell that swiftly permeated the room. It was an odor he could not immediately identify. Images sprang up to his mind, of spring days, sunsets, waves dancing on a sunlit sea, of love and remembrance, and many other things.

  “Sir, wake up!” Toma cried, tugging at Sal’s arm. Sal came swiftly out of his trance. The spider robot pointed at the position screen. Sure enough, there were dots of light moving across the battleship at increasing speed. A constant readout of symbols showed they were a StarSwarm of Balderdash ships, and they were coming in fast.

  “They’re attacking!” Sal cried. “Stations, everyone!” He ordered the engines Emergency Full Ahead. The big ship, powered by new position reentry props and null-mode reactors, moved swiftly into position facing the oncoming smaller ships head-on.

  The Balderdashi on the radio was saying, “We have some stuff here we’d like you to check out.”

  Sal’s nose crinkled. “What’s that?” he asked, “What’s what?” Dick Fogarty said, his head reeling. “It’s coming from that package!” Toma said. “They’re pumping pheromones into our air supply system!”

  “Neutralize the atmosphere!” Sal ordered. “And rig for attack!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN
/>   Now was the time that Salvatore proved his worth. Modem rules of warfare called for the commander to pay close attention to all his ships. His controls in the main ship allowed him to override any pilot’s individual controls. Thus he could form and re-form his ships, hurling them into battle at crucial points; they could support each other when the odds were against them, or let up when it looked like an easy kill.

  Sal snapped himself into the big command chair. His fingers moved lightly over the buttons and switches and dials set in the panel in front of him. Read-out screens ahead and on either side of him gave him constantly updated information on the changing position.

  The Balderdash StarSwarm opened out into Formation B12, known as the Toothed Basket, and swept in toward the giant battleship . . . This maneuver was designed to enfold Sforza forces and make them the nexus of combined firepower.

  It looked like Sal had walked into a trap. But he had a trick or two up his sleeve. No sooner was the formation complete, and the Balderdash licking their lipless mouths, so to speak, seeing that they had the Endymion trapped, than Sal pulled a hairpin retro-reversal. It was a very difficult maneuver. Instant timing was called for. Most space battleships couldn’t be trusted to execute so intricate a maneuver with any hope of success. And to make matters worse, the Balderdash StarSwarm had been joined by two other StarSwarms from bases on nearby planets, Dexter II and Port St. Planet. Their combined forces made them several times more capable than the Endymion and its StarSwarm, and with a combined weight of firepower capable of splitting whole planets asunder. Sal held his position and waited for the crucial moment. His fingers rested lightly on the switches and toggles. With his feet he was able to maneuver the side-bands, and he used his forehead for striking the firing node.

  From the Balderdash viewpoint, it was as if the Battle Group suddenly disappeared from their sight. Not even radar could find them. Sal had performed a simultaneous sideways slip into another dimension.

  He brought the ship out in null space, still maintaining control. Odd-shaped objects the size of moon-lets floated nearby. It would be instant destruction if the ship were to touch them, because they were planets, shrunken down in the strangeness of null space but still in full possession of their mass and coriolis forces.