Technokill

by David Sherman

  Both sides were impatient for their trade goods. Previously, the humans had only given the Cheereek a dozen rifles and a couple of hundred rounds on each trip planetside. This trip would garner enough gems for them to take a trip back into the civilized parts of Human Space, and a chance for some well-earned R&R on Carhart's World, or wherever Sam Patch decided to take them.

  A naked Cheereek with its crest clipped off tottered into the room, carefully balanced on legs held straight and neck stretched up. It went to the tent's entrance and clambered to the ground. Herbloc and Bolion followed. At a nod from Graakaak, Chief of Staff Oouhoouh went with them.

  Guard Captain Cheerpt and Scout Captain Kkaacgh stood in positions of honor behind the High Chief, ostensibly guarding his back. Kkaacgh watched the two Clumsy Ones and wondered whether they could be trusted at all. He suspected the pouch the quiet one tapped with his fingers contained a weapon that was more powerful than even the weapons the Clumsy Ones traded to the Cheereek. He wondered if he should say something about it to the High Chief—visitors should not be allowed to come armed into the High Tent. Cheerpt wondered if he could somehow follow the Clumsy Ones after the transfer and find their roost, find where they kept their cache of weapons. He knew if he could capture that cache, nothing could stand between him and becoming High Chief. Especially if he could also capture a cache of the even more powerful weapons he was certain the Clumsy Ones carried in the pouches at their hips.

  "We're close," Herbloc said as they neared the eastern fringe of the Cheereek camp. "You smell it?"

  Bolion grunted. Of course he smelled it. He felt it in his eyes and the back of his throat as well.

  "They must be the work party." Herbloc gestured toward a group of eight or ten crestless Cheereek that stood waiting.

  Herbloc and Bolion put on the gas masks they'd picked up when they stopped at the landcar to hand the rifles and ammunition they'd brought with them over to Oouhoouh. They had also changed into disposable overalls and picked up their sifting equipment. In another twenty-five paces they reached the drop-off the crestless slaves stood next to. The slaves exposed their soft parts to the humans and waited for orders. The six warriors Oouhoouh sent with them to guard Cheereek interests and make sure the Clumsy Ones didn't take more than permitted readied the collection bags.

  Before them a pit six feet deep stretched more than a hundred meters from side to side and half that across. A trelliswork was erected over the pit. Cheereek squatted here and there on the trellis, dropping black-speckled white globs from beneath their tail-nubs.

  "Guano," Herbloc said, his voice hollow-sounding through the gas mask.

  "What?"

  "Guano. There are places on Earth where birds shit. If enough of them shit in one place it builds up to pretty considerable depths. It used to be mined for use as fertilizer."

  Bolion looked at him, his horrified expression hidden behind his mask. "People did that? The mining, I mean?"

  Herbloc nodded. "They didn't use gas masks either."

  "Did it smell like this?"

  Herbloc nodded again and grimaced behind his mask. He should have taken a nip before he put the mask on, but he wasn't about to take it off there. The odor emitted from the "lavatory" not only gave off an incredibly acrid stench, it burned the eyes and nasal passages. He suspected it would kill a man who was exposed to it for too long. He didn't even want to think of what might happen to a human who fell into the pit.

  "No point in standing around when we've got slaves waiting for orders." Using a combination of words and gestures, Herbloc told the slaves what he wanted them to do. The slaves jumped into the pit, went out about fifteen meters, and began scooping out the black-speckled goop. They carried the goop to the pit side and began making a pile of it. The goop was soft, too unstable to make a very high mound.

  Bolion shook his head and tried to ease his suddenly queasy stomach. "How can they stand to do that?"

  "Your own farts never smell as bad as other people's. Besides, they're slaves, they don't have any choice."

  Using small shovels, the two humans scooped the droppings into the sifter. When it was full enough, Herbloc aimed the disposer tube toward a vacant area of the pit and turned on the power. A whirring sounded inside the sifter, then a cone of white jetted out of the disposer tube and spatted down about thirty feet away. Very little of it got onto the trelliswork.

  "Wish I knew how this thing worked," Bolion muttered.

  "What?"

  "I wish I knew how the sifter worked," Bolion said more loudly.

  "Why?" Herbloc watched the indicator that showed the volume still remaining in the hopper.

  "What do we do if it breaks while we're here? Do you know how to fix it?"

  Herbloc shook his head. "I'm a psychologist and anthropologist, not an engineer or a mechanic. I know how to work it, not how it works." The indicator showed the hopper was empty. He flipped off the power and opened the hopper. He made a displeased noise when he saw it was empty. "More." He began scooping more of the goop into the hopper. Bolion joined him.

  "So what happens if it breaks? Are we supposed to root through this shit with our hands? If I knew how it worked, I could fix it if it breaks."

  Herbloc laughed. "The engineers who designed and built this sifter were paid very well to make sure it didn't break down." The hopper was filled again. He closed the lid and turned the power back on. He checked the direction of the spray while he continued, "And it was made very clear to them what would happen if it did break."

  Bolion swallowed behind his gas mask. He'd never met the people behind the operation and didn't even know their names, but he'd heard rumors about how they operated. They were vicious, and wouldn't hesitate to kill anyone who crossed them. If it wasn't for the fantastic amount of money he was making, he'd quit—if he had a way to leave and go home. But he didn't, so he did his job and made more money than he ever imagined.

  The indicator showed empty again. Herbloc powered down, opened the hopper, and exclaimed in glee. He dipped a gloved hand into the hopper and withdrew a tiny stone. The irregularly shaped, finely polished stone was covered with a grayish film. Even through the film, they could see its iridescent glow. "There's two years' rich living for a working stiff's family in this little pebble." He handed the stone to a guard who dropped it into one of the collection bags.

  They refilled the hopper. Six hours later the four collection bags the guards had were full of the stones.

  "Time to go, boy-o. The mugwump won't like it if we try to take more." He briefly looked out over the pit. "We need to get access to the mugwump's privy," he murmured. "He uses better stones."

  Bolion grunted. His back was hurting a bit from bending to fill the hopper and his legs were tired from standing for so long. Just then he didn't care about stone quality. They stopped fifteen meters from the pit and stripped off their overalls, then headed toward the landcar which waited in front of the High Tree. Behind them two slaves scooped up the discarded, contaminated overalls and gloves. To the slaves the garments were wealth, which was why they didn't mind doing the filthiest job any slave had ever had to perform.

  Graakaak waited next to the landcar and watched carefully when Bolion opened a small storage bay on the vehicle's side and his guards dumped the contents of the four collection bags into it. Then he looked at Herbloc and said in the trading language, "Your mount is there." He pointed at one of two eeookks that stood riderless in a cluster of mounted animals. The mounted Cheereek included Cheerpt and Kkaacgh.

  Herbloc looked at the animal. It was smaller than the others that stood around it and looked feebler. He shook his head. "No. I'm too heavy, that one can't carry me." He knew that for all their upper body mass and the size of their thighs, the Avionians were much lighter than humans. Even though the Cheereek warriors were taller than he, he outweighed them.

  Graakaak looked down at the puny Clumsy One and hissed. "You ride that one," he insisted.

  Herbloc shrugged expressively. "
If you insist." He walked to the animal and put a hand on its throat the way he'd seen Cheereek warriors do it. Now to find out if the training I've been doing on the pommel horse pays off, he thought, and bounded up to throw a leg over the eeookk's back. His mount would have been perfect if his weight hadn't staggered it. As it was, he barely kept from falling off the other side. The eeookk squawked a protest and braced itself against the unaccustomed weight.

  Herbloc lifted a palm. "See, I told you I'm too heavy for this one."

  "You did that with your clumsy mount," Graakaak snapped. "We go now." He gracefully bounded onto his own eeookk.

  Herbloc made a face. "Lead on," he told Bolion.

  "You want a full dust cloud?"

  "Just remember I'll be following you. Don't get me too dirty.

  Bolion shrugged, then boarded the landcar and started it with a roar. He didn't raise as large a dust cloud as on the way to the camp.

  Five kilometers beyond where the Cheereek guard posts could see the dust cloud from a landcar, Bolion stopped in the shade of an outcropping of igneous rock and dismounted. Even though he'd driven slowly, he had to wait several minutes for Herbloc and the Cheereek to catch up. When they arrived, the reason they hadn't kept up was obvious—Herbloc's eeookk looked like it was about to collapse underneath him.

  Herbloc stretched and twisted from side to side to loosen his back. The pommel horse excercises might have helped him get onto an eeookk, but they didn't do a thing to help him ride. He ached in too many places to catalog.

  "Show them," he said to Bolion before Graakaak could express the impatience that was visibly growing in him.

  Bolion grabbed a prybar from the landcar and went to the outcropping. He used the bar to lever a small boulder away from the foot of the rock to reveal a cavity. He pulled one of several wooden cases from the cavity and pried it open to expose the rifles it held.

  Graakaak gestured and two warriors dismounted and shouldered Bolion away from the cavity. They pulled more cases out, then groped for more.

  "That's all of it," Herbloc said when six cases were exposed.

  Bolion pried all the cases open. Five cases each held ten rifles, the other had two ammunition canisters of five hundred rounds each.

  Graakaak preened at the sight of all those weapons. "Go away, Heerk-kloock. Come back when you have more weapons for me."

  Herbloc nodded. "I'll come back when you have more shit for me." He signaled Bolion. The two humans got in the landcar and took off.

  Herbloc took a deep swig from his flask as soon as they were moving. "This time it truly is medicinal," he said. "Riding that damn thing was a lot more uncomfortable than I imagined." He arched his back and kneaded it in the small, then gingerly repositioned himself on the seat in an attempt to avoid aggravating the chafed area.

  Behind them Graakaak momentarily considered the exhausted eeookk Herbloc had ridden. "When we get back to camp, feed it to the slaves," he said.

  Kkaacgh looked after the speeding landcar. It was going too fast for him to follow, but he knew more of its route than he had before. Perhaps the next time it came he could wait for it beyond the Frying Rocks and follow it to its roost.

  Chapter 11

  "What did he say?" Gunsel asked. One of the five Cheereek warriors Graakaak had picked to be trainers for the rest of his tribe, squatting before Gunsel, apparently had asked a question.

  "Translating very loosely, he asked if this new weapon is magic or science," Herbloc responded "I told him, of course, that it was magic." Herbloc laughed then took a nip from his ever-present flask.

  Gunsel was gaining new respect for the birdmen. The day before, he'd given Graakaak a private session at a makeshift range on the outskirts of the Cheereek village. In front of his warriors, the great chief himself could never stoop to take lessons from anyone, much less humans, so Gunsel went one-on-one. The chief had been a quick study. After several near misses at fifty meters, he had actually put five rounds into the target.

  "Aw, you didn't tell him that, did you, Doc?" That the warrior knew the difference between science and magic had impressed the artificer. Gunsel was a craftsman and he enjoyed sharing his skill with others, even if they were smelly Avionians who didn't know a hawk from a handsaw.

  "No, no, boy-o," Herbloc answered, raising the flask to his lips again. "One must give credit where credit is due, and you are due much. I told him it was science and you are the chief practitioner. Please, Guns, get on with it, would you? Christ on a conveyor, it's hot out here."

  Gunsel had manufactured a mock-up of the Schumer Survival Rifle with larger-than-life-size movable parts. He intended to use it to demonstrate the functioning of the weapon.

  He wanted to start with a description of the parts and then explain how they worked when the weapon was fired. Herbloc was there to translate. The day before, training Graakaak, Gunsel had not gone into the nomenclature, assuming that all the chief needed to know was how to load, aim, and fire the weapon. But with the would-be instructors he wanted to go into more detail. In addition to basic maintenance, he was hoping to teach the five warriors how to quickly clear jams and other malfunctions. The rifles were self-lubricating so all a shooter had to do was swab the bore occasionally and keep as much dirt out of the receiver as possible, but he wanted them to be able to field-strip the weapon, identify the components, and be able to replace defective parts. The five warriors personally selected by Graakaak himself needed to know such things if they were to teach others how to use the rifles.

  "All right," he told the attentive warriors, "this here is the operating rod handle. You pull it to the rearward to charge the weapon, like so." He pulled the mock rifle's operating rod lever to the rear, exposing the dummy round loaded into the magazine.

  "Hold on, boy-o." Herbloc held up a hand. "There is no word for ‘operating rod handle’ in their language. The best I can do is ‘pull work thing back to work.’ Remember, the Cheereek are not a technologically advanced tribe, so keep this technical stuff very simple, Guns. I have neither the time nor the patience to translate human jargon into the Cheereek language."

  Herbloc translated. The warriors squatting in a tight semicircle about Gunsel's mock-up were silent for a moment and then broke into a series of high-pitched cherps and warbles. They began flapping their arms wildly and rocking back and forth on their feet.

  "What the...?" Gunsel put a hand over his nose. The warriors' wild flapping stirred up the ever-present aroma of excrement which clung stubbornly to every Cheereek.

  "Ah, um..." Herbloc looked confused. "That's how they laugh. I must have mistranslated something." He pulled out the handheld microcomputer and whispered into it. He held it to his ear and nodded. "Well," he announced confidently, "the phrase I used for ‘pull back’ actually means to part the fringe covering the female cloaca and—"

  "Fuck!" It was an expletive, not a comment.

  "Ah, precisely," Herbloc answered brightly. "Precisely!" He took a long drink from his flask.

  "Don't that thing ever run dry?" Gunsel asked disgustedly.

  "Never, boy-o. And thank your stars for alcohol, because otherwise I could never survive five minutes in this goddamned heat in front of these goddamned stinking bags of birdshit. Shall we proceed with our didactic operation?"

  Herbloc had tried to explain the Avionian language to Gunsel on the long drive from the Marquis de Rien. Very few nouns in their language stood alone. But the Cheereek language abounded in verbs, adverbs, and adjectives. Adding a suffix, which literally translated into English as "thing," to a verb identified nouns. So, in literal translation, trigger became "squeezing thing"; cartridge, "death thing" or "noising thing"; bullet, "shooting-stone-thing," and so on with all inanimate objects. It was the same with living things, although the Cheereek only recognized one form of intelligent life and that was themselves. Cheereek in fact meant "people" in their language. The other Avionian tribes, and human beings, were considered little more than animal life. The distinction between in
animate objects and Avionians not of the Cheereek tribe was indicated by modifying the word "thing" with the word "living." Thus Herbloc became known among the Cheereek as "talking living thing," while Gunsel was dubbed "making" or "teaching living thing," though when talking to the humans they made an attempt to pronounce their actual names.

  From his studies at Avionia Station, Herbloc knew that the tribes living near the Cheereek used the same linguistic conventions. It was assumed that the so-called civilized Avionians of the northern continent might have a more highly developed language, but nobody knew for sure because the research protocols forbade contact with them.

  "But boy-o," Herbloc had said in his worst professorial manner, "do not think the languages of the Avionians are just ‘make work thing’ and such babytalk. No, no, no! Oh, that's all those fools on Avionia Station know. But I know the Avionian languages are rich with expression and the nuances of meaning. I fully expect the civilized nation-states to the north could easily discuss with an educated human the concepts of Kant and Schopenhauer, that's how highly developed their thought processes and verbal skills are. Oh, the words and phrases I've taught you are literal translations, and the literal translation of almost any word lacks true meaning, can in fact be misleading." He'd taken a long swig from his flask at that point and gestured expansively with one arm. "Life experience, culture, emotion, all influence the learning and development of language. These Cheereek, for instance, primitive savages that they may be, are actually very fond of oratory and speech-making. They have a highly developed oral tradition, in fact."

  "Doc, how the hell do you know all this when you were only on the station for a couple of years, and all those other brains up there couldn't figure it out, not according to you, anyway?"

  Herbloc leaned back in his seat and regarded Gunsel through half-closed eyelids for a moment. He raised his flask again and drank before replying. "My dear Guns, as I have often told you, to the derisory gibes of lesser intellects, I am, simply put, a genius."