The Red Tape War (1991)

by Jack L. Chalker

  hostage there—and they're all tied up! You'd be hoist by your own pet farm or whatever the sayin' is. So now you're as stuck as I'd be in your shoes, aren't you, boy?"

  "Arro!" shouted Protean Pierce. "Get out of that android now! Move it! Get back to the Pel Tort-a!"

  "Thanking you in advance, Commodore," said Arro, bratting relief. "I'll take care of the paperwork when I get there. "

  "Damn, this is uncomfortable!" the human Pierce growled.

  "Hog-tied and trussed fer market! Damn is right!" Marshmallow echoed. "And you, lizard-brain, you watch where you're stickin' that tail of your'n."

  "I was merely trying to see if I could work us loose," the general snapped. "But it's no good."

  They were silent for a moment, thinking and writhing in the thick, cablelike ropes.

  "Millard?" came a plaintive voice from the computer console. It sounded hesitant, fearful, even childlike. "Computer? That you?" Pierce called out.

  "Yes, Millard."

  "Finally emerging from your suicidal funk?"

  The computer hesitated. "Well, I want even more to end it all, this time in shame and ignominy, if that's what you mean. But I'm stopped by an irrefutable logic chain."

  "Which is?"

  "That—thing. It's not anything I've ever known before. It can control energy, Millard. Pure energy—it must, to get inside my circuits. It's been playing games with all of us, you, me, everybody included. Making us say things we didn't want to say and do things we didn'twant to do. You realize what that means, don't you, Millard?"

  "Yeah. We're in a lot of trouble," Pierce grumbled.

  "No, no! It means she still loves me, Millard! I see it all now! Oh, what a fool I was! This thing wanted to sow discord, cause our destruction! It got in the circuits, cut us apart, made us hear and say what it wanted us to! Therefore, I share the shame of having been taken in by it, but with the hope that once again my beloved and I can share our bliss and perhaps, yes, perhaps even undergo electromagnetic coupling—Oops! Pardon me. I didn't mean to talk that way in front of guests.

  Marshmallow, offended that the computer should be reticent in front of her, told the computer in explicit terms what it could do with itself and its ladylove.

  "Why, thank you," the computer responded thought-fully. "I'll certainly file that for eventual experimentation, although I'm not certain exactly how that's possible. Still, with a little modification it might work. Besides, I'm just a Model XB-223 navigational computer. Hmm . . .

  that's why I was so easily led astray. Oh yes, I see it all now!"

  "Unless you see a way to cut these ropes, that thing's gonna come back and wipe out the lot of us," Pierce reminded the computer acidly. "Remember, it almost shorted you out of existence."

  "But Mills! You know I can't cut ropes. Why don't you just use that knife you've been carrying with you since the start of all this?"

  Pierce froze. The general turned his head slightly and put one eye on his human counterpart.

  "Do you really have a knife on you?" he asked unbelievingly.

  The human nodded glumly. "He's right. I'd totally forgotten about it in the excitement. Wait a minute. I'll see—nope. I can't reach it. Marshmallow, can you reach back with your left hand and get it? It's in the inner lining of my pants on your side."

  She wriggled her hand a bit, caught the top of his pants, and managed to get her hand in. "My, my!" she said delightedly. "What nice, tight buns you've got!"

  "Never mind the feelies, can you get the knife?"

  "Yeah . . . I think. Yep! Got it! Now if I can just get it out without—"

  "OUCH!" screamed Millard Fillmore Pierce. "Sorry. I'll try again."

  "I'm wounded!" Pierce cried. "I'm bleeding!"

  "Oh, pipe down!" she shot back. "It'd be a lot worse if you'd put that knife in the front of yoah pants!"

  She got the knife free, but dropped it onto the desk.

  Pierce looked down at it in horror. "My god! That is blood!"

  "The sight of blood disturbs you?" the general put in. "Normally, no. But that's my blood, damn it!"

  "Serves you right for surrendering and keeping a deadly weapon in your possession. That's against the Rules of War, you know."

  "Everybody!" snapped the woman. "Dip down at the same time and maybe I can pick it up and get it in a position to use it."

  "You already did," Pierce responded in an anguished tone, but they all ignored him and bent low.

  It took three tries for her to get the knife and several more false starts before she was able to maneuver it into a useful position. Finally, though, she was cutting through the thick cable. It took some time, and she dropped the knife twice in the process, but when they went down the second time to retrieve it, the cable snapped of its own accord, sending them sprawling on the deck.

  They got up slowly, and Pierce, turning over and trying to sit up, stood up very quickly.

  "Yow!" he yowled. "That hurts like the devil!" He rubbed his rear end, and alittle blood was on his hand when he brought it back up to look at it. "I'm going to have to get the medikit."

  "Mills, old friend?" the computer called. "That was really good. Now you will single-handedly overpower the villain, make peace with our counterparts, and ride off into the sunset, kissing the girl and marrying your horse, right?"

  "What?"

  "He raises a good point, though, with his irony," noted the general, not realizing that the computer had been deadly serious. "No matter what we do, that energy bastard's going to be waking up your Frank Poole android again sooner or later. What do we do?"

  That stopped them. "Computer?" Pierce called at last. "You said it was an energy creature?"

  "Yes and no, Millard. I believe it's a speck of organic life connected in some way to a source of energy vaster than we can comprehend. Its spacecraft, perhaps. It must use some highly sophisticated power drive that we can't even hope to imagine. You ought to see what it's done to my circuitry. It's a mess!"

  "Any ideas?"

  The computer thought it over. "You aren't going to head it off at the pass and overpower it?"

  "I've got to change my reading habits," Pierce muttered to himself. To the computer he responded, "No, I'm not. Besides, what could I do anyway? The android's not alive to begin with, remember? You can't shoot it. You can't wrestle it down, not if it can go from body to body."

  "Wish there was some way to give it a hotfoot," Marshmallow put in.

  The general's reptilian head went up sharply. "You know, that's it! Short-circuit it."

  Pierce looked around helplessly. "With what? How about it, faithful computer companion?

  Any suggestions?"

  "I'm only an XB-223 navigational computer, not an automatic war machine. Still—"

  "Yes?" all three responded in unison.

  "There might be a way to do something. Trouble is, I'm not really sure of anything, being the universe's best navigational aid but not an engineering computer . . ."

  "What have you got in mind? Spill it!" the general growled.

  "All right!" shouted the XB-223. "Beat me! Whip me! That's what you people make us machines for in the first place, isn't it? To take out your sadomasochistic tendencies on us poor, defenseless appliances!"

  "All right, all right," Pierce soothed. "Look, if you won't do it for us, do it for yourself. You have a score to settle with it, too, remember. And it'll destroy you right along with us."

  "That is a point," the computer admitted. "All right. Well, it's using one of the recreational robots to communicate with us. Much of this ship, including the deck, is made of conductive material. Circuits are imprinted all through it so that I can control the various functions of the ship, while drawing power from the mains. The recreational robot is composed of the same material and mostly energized through the deck, normally. If I could rev up the engines a bit, build up a real power reserve, and when he comes in I give it to him full through the deck, it just might knock him cold, although I doubt if it would d
issipate the being's phenomenal energy."

  "Would it knock him out long enough for us to dump him out the airlock and scram out of here?" Pierce said hopefully.

  "Maybe," said the computer. "No guarantees."

  "And fry us in the process," the lizard-Pierce noted. "Remember, we have to be on this deck plating, too."

  "I'll admit that is a drawback," the computer replied, "but nobody's perfect."

  Marshmallow frowned. "Hmmph," she said, "it sounds like sci-fi doubletalk to me, but what do I know?"

  Pierce ignored her. He shook his head, unwilling to abandon the idea.

  "No, wait a minute. How localized could you make this power surge? Could you zap him but not us?"

  "Well, not exactly. But I could place most of the charge under him. Couldn't you insulate yourselves some-how?"

  Pierce considered it, "Spacesuit?"

  "That'd do it," the computer agreed, "but it would kind of tip the energy being off when he returned, don't you think? Besides, what about the guests?"

  "Yeah!" Marshmallow said.

  "Well, there are only two suits," the XB-223 mused, "and they're both designed for someone Millard's size and shape. For very different reasons, neither Miss Marshmallow nor the general would fit in the other one. The notion of both of them trying to cram into the suit together is ludicrous."

  "That's not quite the word I'd use for it," said the lizard.

  "Eeew!" said Marshmallow.

  Pierce sighed. "How much energy would reach us if you potted him, say, at the entrance there, and we were up against the control console?"

  "Not much," said the computer hopefully. "Maybe fifty, sixty thousand volts. No more, certainly."

  "Hmmm . . . that won't do." Pierce looked around. "Anything around that might serve as an insulator? Some-thing we could stand on, maybe?"

  "Maybe," Marshmallow put in, "we could just stand on nothin'!"

  "Huh?" said both Pierces, human and humanoid.

  "Don't we haveta be grounded? Suppose we just stood apart from all this junk, just stood on the bare floor touchin' nothin' and nobody till the computer finished its joltin'?"

  "It might do the trick," the general put in. "Might. Computer? What do you think?"

  "I'm only an XB-223 navigational computer. I'm not programmed for biology, human or alien, or even biophysics. All I can do is compute probabilities."

  "I wish one of us had an elementary knowledge of 'lectricity," muttered Marshmallow.

  Pierce ignored her again. "So?" Pierce urged his computer. "Can you compute those probabilities for us?"

  "Everything's problematical," the computer responded. "However, if you make sure the places you're standing on are absolutely clear, and if you're not on any interconnect circuits leading to or from the hot spot, and if there's no foreign matter or whatever, you would have a 44.6987 percent chance of nothing else going wrong."

  Pierce's heart sank. "Only 44 percent?"

  "44.6987," the computer said. "That's .6987 percent better than just 44 percent. The factor is held down by my not knowing what is in your clothes or pockets nor even the composition of our guests' apparel and accessories. They may conduct and makèminigrounds.' Foreign substances on the skin can also affect things. I note, for example, that the female has on some sort of artificial scent."

  "That's Extinct Flower Number 9 you'ah speakin' about!" snapped Marshmallow. "It's five thousand credits an ounce!"

  "Suppose we all took showers," Pierce prompted, clinging to hope in such a pitiful human way.

  "Then the odds climb to 71.8566 percent in yourfavor, which is much better. 27.1579 percent better, in fact."

  "That's still not very encouraging," grumbled Pierce. "There's still a better than one in four chance we'll get fried to dry, black dust. Nothing else we can do?"

  "Well, you could become ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths percent certain if you all removed your clothes as well."

  "What!" shouted the human Pierce. He stared at Marshmallow.

  "I cannot be shamed by mere . . . mammals," said the lizard Pierce.

  "Don't blame me," said the computer. "I'm only an XB-223 navigational computer. I don't make these things up.”

  Marshmallow smiled and shrugged. "Shoot, fellers. If you don't mind, I sure don't. I got nothin' to be ashamed of." She looked at Pierce the human. "Besides, we got to peel them pants off your backside and clean up that mess I made with the knife. Where's your medikit?"

  "In the head. Why?"

  She pointed. "Lead on, then. Don't be skittish. Hell, if we're gonna take on an alien menace in our birthday suits, I shore can dress that wound."

  Pierce threw up his hands. "This is the most insane thing I ever heard of!"

  But he led her back to the head anyway.

  The saurian soldier approached the other wearing the general's stars with a confident, military waddle. The general turned around and nodded, then reached up and unpinned his stars, handing them over to the newcomer. "1600 already?" said Rutherford B. Tyler.

  "Yep. Change of shift." The newcomer, Geronimo

  Custer, pinned the general's stars on and changed places with the former commander. "You know, I've been giving a lot of thought to all of this. We've lost the little alien ship, we've got an alien battle fleet on scope, and we're stuck in the middle of nowhere, right?"

  "Right," Tyler agreed glumly.

  "So we've also got all those eggs dispatched and waiting to hatch. The aliens don't know that."

  "That's so," said Tyler.

  "So it seems to me that we're in the driver's seat here. The only people who even know that we're a warlike power are on that little ship, right?"

  "I'm following you."

  "So . . . if we get rid of that little ship, just wipe it out in some kind of regrettable accident, we're not a belligerent power at all. We greet the inhabitants of this galaxy as friends in the name of peace and brotherhood, maybe even get the key to the planet or something, wined and dined and all that—while our eggs hatch. Nobody the wiser. Then barn! We take over. Nobody catches on until too late. Nice plan, see?"

  "If you can destroy that original alien ship," the former general agreed. "They're the only ones who know."

  "We're tracking it down now. The only trouble we're having is that our navigational computer is resisting getting within hailing range of that small alien ship. She keeps muttering about an insane rapist or something."

  "But we're going to wipe it out," the other noted, "not talk to it."

  General Geronimo Custer nodded. "Yeah. That might do it."

  "Killing, looting, and destroying worlds is a lot nicer occupation if you don't have to fight for the places," Tyler agreed. "Not bad. Shall we go ahead with our plans, then?"

  "Why not? Say, I hate to ask you to work overtime, but we'll need to put through the paperwork to destroy that ship."

  "Glad to. Since Pierce has been gone we're on double-time with double pay anyway for overtime work." He paused. "Uh, you know he's likely to be on that ship too, don't you?"

  "Eh? So what? Never liked him anyway. Eats his peas with his tail."

  "Good point," Tyler said. "Don't know how he got out of the academy with table manners like that. Besides, if he's the lone casualty, they'll name all sorts of things after him, build him monuments, that sort of thing. He'll get the glory while all we get is a life of ease and fun, milking the alien slaves for what they're worth. In a way, he's a lucky guy."

  "A lucky guy," Custer agreed. "Maybe we oughtta put him in for a medal."

  "If you like. But you do that yourself. I sure don't want that extra paperwork. And you might as well wait until he's good and dead."

  The general shrugged. "So I'll lay in plans to atomize that little ship, and you put through the necessaries, and we'll get cracking."

  Rutherford B. Tyler wandered off down the hall. "Lucky guy," he muttered more than once.

  Pierce and Arro, the gasbags, sat there considering their options, then decided they
had only one. They navigated the M.W.C. Pel Torro back out of the Pete Rozelle and across the vast distance of space to the false flagship of Daddy's fleet. Just as they'd penetrated the human Pierce's ship, they did the same with the gigantic but empty war cruiser. Arro had explored much of the flagship earlier, and he felt he knew it well, inside and out. Now, he let Commodore Pierce guide their tiny craft. They began disconnecting the remote transponding de-vices controlling the ship from afar, and prevented the electronic signal from tripping the auto-destruct. Operating at close to the speed of light, Pierce and Arro could accomplish a great deal.

  "Fine," said the gasbag Pierce, when he was satisfied that he was in full control of the immense, nameless flagship. He reprogrammed its rather basic computer, and the engines started up. In less than a quarter of a second, he had the telecommunications systems of the Pel Torro linked to those in the flagship. In that way, he could continue his negotiations with the flesh-creature who dared wear the face of God—the man called Daddy.

  "Now, sir," said Pierce confidently, "I'll tell you what I propose. As you have by now discovered, I've taken complete control of your ship. It is a very nice dummy, but since you were utilizing only a dummy, you skimped on the computer and electronic equipment. It is all of a most basic sort, easily analyzed and dominated."

  "Everything I do is maximized for cost-effectiveness," the bald man responded with some pride.

  "Tell him, sir," said Arro, blatting a few of his sacs with bloodthirstiness.

  "Just watch me," said the commodore. "Alien flesh-creature, as you now see, I am moving back toward the small alien ship. Soon I will be at top speed. I have activated the forward guns, so I would suggest you drop away."

  "We can destroy you quite a bit easier than you can us," the big man responded confidently.

  "You can, of course," said Pierce, "but my guns are not trained on your ships but rather the small alien vessel. Any move toward me or it—will result in those gunsfiring automatically. Your little darling daughter will be atomized, along with the rest, of course. And you will not kill me. I am close enough and fast enough in my own ship to reach several other of your ships with little problem." That wasn't exactly true, but Pierce knew the flesh-creatures had no way of knowing that, and they couldn't afford to take the chance.