Technokill

by David Sherman

  "They are saying," one of the lab techs answered, "‘No! No! No more!’ Captain"

  "Why?"

  Everyone was silent for a moment. "Because," Dr. Abraham said at last, "they are afraid of the medical experiments."

  "Silence, Omer!" Hoxey shouted. "This is my business! They have no right to know anything about our researches here on Avionia Station! They are not scientists! They don't understand!"

  "Because of the medical experiments," Abraham continued, ignoring Hoxey. "Our protocol calls for us to ‘study’ the Avionians, not experiment on them. Dr. Hoxey has exceeded her authority here. I have always been against these experiments."

  "Now I see what you're up to, Omer!" Hoxey said. "Now I see! You want to head this shift. If I go, you're next in line. Omer, that's—that's so—mundane of you, so plebeian."

  "No, Thelma," Abraham answered tiredly, "I just want to stop you. I am through with these experiments. Our captives died because of them. It is wrong to continue."

  General Cazombi turned to Nast. "What have we stepped into up here?"

  "Excuse me, sir," Captain Conorado said to General Cazombi, "but I am going to remove these three from their cages and return them to the surface of their world."

  A long moment of dead silence descended upon the laboratory. Everyone except Cazombi and Nast stared at Conorado in stark disbelief.

  "You—You can't do that!" Dr. Hoxey screamed. "You have no authority!"

  "Pardon me, ma'am, but I do have all the authority I need to set these people free." Again a long silence descended upon them; it was the first time anyone in the lab referred to the Avionians as "people." Finally Captain Conorado turned to the technician who had translated for him. "What's your name, sir?"

  "Franny Krank," the labman answered.

  "Well, Franny, I want you to tell them something for me."

  Krank shrugged. "Hell, Captain, all I can do is make baby talk with them."

  "Franny, I don't want you to recite the Gettysburg Address. Just tell them I am letting them go."

  "No!" Hoxey screamed. "Krank, you unlock those cages for this madman and I'll see to it you never work another day in your life! I swear it!" Her face had turned beet red, and the veins in her neck stood out as she shouted. Her hair had come unbound and hung about her face Medusalike as she screamed in frustrated rage.

  "Let them out, Franny," Abraham said quietly.

  The man said something in a rapid series of cheeps and squeaks and then unlocked the cages. Hesitantly, the three Avionians hopped out and then gathered closely around Conorado. They smelled heavily of excrement, but what the Marine officer noticed above all else was their shivering. He moved toward the door. The three Avionians' feet made scrabbling noises on the floor as they followed closely behind Conorado.

  "You remove them from my care and they'll die!" Hoxey shouted. "You'll be responsible. Their deaths will be on you! General! Stop him!"

  General Cazombi shook his head. "I'm only here to supervise planetside operations, Doctor."

  "Nast! Nast!" she screamed. "Enforce the law! Stop that man!"

  "Ma'am, I'm only here to take charge of the prisoners," Nast demurred.

  "I'll lodge a complaint against you for this, Mr. Hotshot Marine!" Hoxey shouted after Conorado, who had begun to walk back down the companionway, the three Avionians eagerly skittering along right behind him. "I'll ruin you! You'll never get another job again! I swear."

  Conorado stopped and turned slowly around until he faced Dr. Hoxey, who stood in the laboratory doorway, her fists clenched in fury.

  "To hell with you, lady," he said, and then, "Dean, you come with me. And bring the woo."

  Dr. Abraham had selected a remote island for the release of the captives. He explained the inhabitants were simple farmers who lived peacefully in several small villages. "Maybe they'll believe the wild stories these three will tell about being abducted by aliens and becoming the subjects of medical experiments," he'd said. "But it doesn't matter. These people never have contact with the outside world."

  The Essay landed in a heavily forested area. The three captives were escorted outside. "Krank, tell them they're cut loose," Conorado said.

  "You. Go. Now," Krank translated, pointing to the forest. "Nest. Over there." He pointed to the northwest. "Go."

  The three hesitated. And then one by one they hopped off into the foliage.

  "Well," Conorado said, "that's that, I guess."

  Inarticulate with rage, delegating the running of the station to Dr. Abraham, Dr. Hoxey had confined herself to her quarters. She made it clear she was preparing a full report of the incident and. would be returning to Old Earth on the next resupply ship, to personally file her complaint with the highest authorities.

  "Let's get out of here," Conorado said.

  "Wait! One of them's coming back," Krank exclaimed.

  The creature emerged slowly from behind the fronds of a huge fernlike growth and stood staring back at the humans. He squeaked something, turned around and disappeared for good.

  "What'd he say?" Bass asked Krank.

  "I don't know. I couldn't catch it. It sounded like Avionian, but—?"

  "It sounded something like ‘hank foo,’ or maybe ‘yank foo,’" General Cazombi observed.

  "More like ‘sank loo,’ I think," Nast said.

  Charlie Bass shook his head. "I think it was saying ‘Thank you’. Skipper, our chow's getting cold."

  "Well, gentlemen, thanks for coming along with me on this," Conorado said. He felt he should say something momentous, to mark the occasion—his last official action, if Hoxey had her way about it. Instead he just said, "Okay, let's go."

  Chapter 31

  The Nomads

  Graakaak, High Chief of the Cheereek, was not happy as he and his warriors returned from the attack on the Aawk-vermin rookery. Angry brown scabbed most of his right side where he'd been thrown by a galumphing eeookk that stepped in a hole. The eeookk's leg was broken and it had to be destroyed, though Graakaak would have killed the beast anyway for throwing him. He'd ridden another eeookk so hard that when he had to stop to wait for his warriors to catch up, it collapsed under him dead.

  Some might say the attack on the Aawk-vermin rookery was a success. All the Aawk-vermin were killed—males, fledglings, elders, females—save for some females who were taken by the warriors for their pleasure and for work in their nests. Everything of value that the Aawk-vermin rookery had held was in the possession of the returning war party. Everything else, including the excess valuables the Cheereek couldn't carry, had been destroyed in fire.

  But Graakaak wouldn't call the attack a success. The Cheereek had lost eighteen warriors killed and many more wounded.

  Eighteen warriors killed! In an attack on the Aawk-vermin! Graakaak, High Chief of the Cheereek, was furious at the Aawk-vermin.

  All the casualties had come after the Clumsy Ones' weapons had stopped firing and the Cheereek warriors had to resort to using the weapons as clubs—a use to which they were particularly unsuited—or the short spears they had used before the Clumsy Ones came with their marvelous weapons.

  The Clumsy Ones' weapons stopped working because the warriors ran out of shooting stones to feed into them. Why had they run out? Where were the Clumsy Ones? Why were the Clumsy Ones not bringing more of the shiny shooting stones, and more of the weapons?

  Graakaak, High Chief of the Cheereek, was furious at the Clumsy Ones.

  It was not a good enough explanation that the traitor Cheerpt had killed three of the Clumsy Ones. Graakaak had seen the greed too clearly in their eyes when they traded for the bowel stones. The Clumsy Ones did not have enough of the bowel stones; creatures such as they could never have enough of something for which they lusted so. They wanted bowel stones like a hatchling wanted regurgitation from its parents. They wanted bowel stones almost as much as Graakaak wanted to conquer the world.

  Now, because the Clumsy Ones had not come with more weapons and more of the shiny shooting
things, the Cheereek had lost eighteen warriors to the Aawk-vermin. The worthless Aawk-vermin!

  The rookery was in sight. Reconstruction had gone well after so much of it burned in the fire started by the traitor Cheerpt. Soon, Graakaak would perch in his new High Tree and hold council with his advisers. Appointing a replacement for Cheerpt could wait for a time longer. Before then he had to send Kkaacgh and his scouts to find the Clumsy Ones. The Clumsy Ones had to bring more shooting stones. They must.

  With the greatest of caution, Kkaacgh, Captain of Scouts, and seven of his scouts approached the Bower Curtain from two directions; Kkaacgh and three from one side, the other four under command of Lead Scout Cheererere from the other. They met in the place where the Clumsy Ones' High Tree had sat, the place where they first saw the Clumsy Ones' demons. It was an empty place, barren of the Clumsy Ones and their spoor.

  To be sure, Kkaacgh found the dents in the ground where the Clumsy Ones' High Tree had squatted, and he found the scorch marks its leaving left behind. But the edges of the dents were crumbling, they were slowly filling in as all holes fill in, and the scorch marks were fading as weeds took root and ate them away. In another season there would be no sign remaining that the Clumsy Ones' High Tree had ever been here.

  Kkaacgh sent Cheererere and three scouts a full day's galumph to the west and took the other three a full day's galumph east. They met again back at the Clumsy Ones' place two days later. Neither party had found any sign of Clumsy Ones or their demons, though both had found sign of Aawk-vermin, Koocaah-lice, and others whose identity they did not know.

  It was with heavy heart and great trepidation that Kkaacgh and his scouts returned to the rookery.

  "It was their demons," Chief Councilor Tschaah said firmly. "The Clumsy Ones' demons did not want them here. The demons took them away."

  Graakaak shot into threat posture, his lips nearly touching the neck of the ancient councilor. "How can you say that?" he demanded.

  "It is obvious," Tschaah said in a voice perilously close to condescending. "The Clumsy Ones came and went as they chose before their demons came. They have come only once since then. And that time the demons came and killed more than a hundred of our warriors to express their displeasure with us. Their demons do not want the Clumsy Ones to trade with the Cheereek."

  Graakaak slowly drew back from full threat posture but kept his neck extended and his body almost level with the floor of the High Tree. He regarded the ancient councilor with a look that should have had him dribbling uncontrollably from his cloaca, but Tschaah merely looked back, unafraid.

  Graakaak turned his gaze to Kkaacgh, and the Captain of Scouts quivered in a most satisfactory manner. The High Chief withdrew completely from threat posture.

  Beyond the confines of his High Tent, Graakaak heard the cackling and chittering of new fledglings. He heard the shrilling of females trying to keep their young from getting trampled by warriors unmindful of the fledglings that darted between their legs or into their eeookks' paths. The racket had been growing for days as more and more hatchlings reached age and size to leave their nests and begin exploring the world around them.

  Graakaak gave thought to the words of the ancient councilor. Perhaps Tschaah was right about the Clumsy Ones' demons.

  The Clumsy Ones might be gone, but there was still a world to conquer. The season's hatchlings were already fledglings big enough to leave the nests. Game animals and peckings were running low in the area of the rookery. The Cheereek could live long on the food taken from conquered enemies, but taken food was a poor substitute for the thrill of the hunt, or the joy of fresh peckings. Whether the Clumsy Ones were gone or not, it was time to seek a new roosting place.

  "Scout Captain Kkaacgh, have you found our next roosting place?" Graakaak asked.

  Kkaacgh pointed his face at the roof of the High Tree. He didn't want Graakaak to see in his face that he hadn't thought of sending scouts out yet to find a new roosting place. "There is a possible one to the southeast, High Chief," he replied. "But I need to see it with my own eyes to know that it is sufficiently filled with game and peckings before I can recommend it to you." He had seen that place one time when he attempted to trail the Clumsy Ones to their nest. Perhaps no other tribe had found it since then; perhaps it was as good as he remembered.

  "Go and see it," Graakaak, High Chief of the Cheereek, commanded. "It is time to move our nests."

  Four and a half days later Kkaacgh returned. The roosting place he'd examined was even richer than his earlier brief look had led him to suspect. He reported his findings to Graakaak, and the High Chief was pleased. When Kkaacgh told him of seeing a herd of wild eeookks, Graakaak crowed in ecstasy. It was many seasons since the Cheereek last had wild eeookks to tame. Graakaak issued orders for the move. The constant din of a Cheereek rookery doubled as warriors, guards, and scouts exhorted their females to pack, and the females struggled to sort through what they would take and what they would leave, all the while shrilling at their new fledglings to keep them from getting trampled in the chaotic movement of nomads breaking camp. They worked until after Aaaah settled into his bed for the night, and left the old rookery as soon as morning meals were pecked and the youngest fledglings were bundled onto waiting pack-eeookks. Aaaah was past his sky-peak by the time the last of the Cheereek left the rookery.

  "They've started their migration," a tech reported to Dr. Hoxey.

  She snorted. "They're late this year. I expected them to be on the move days ago."

  Dr. Abraham shrugged. "Not necessarily, Thelma," he said. "They don't have calendars to move by. They stay in one place until food becomes scarce." He nodded at the display on which the tech showed the nomads' movement. "That's their birthing place. They stay there until their newborns are old enough to make the trek to their next encampment. This is within the time range that's been established for when they move from a birthing place to a new camp."

  Dr. Hoxey curled a lip.

  Abraham didn't mention it to Hoxey, but later that day he informed General Cazombi of the move.

  The next morning Captain Conorado sent first platoon to examine the abandoned encampment. The Marines blasted planetside in their normal "high speed on a bad road" manner, but the Essays took them directly to the abandoned encampment instead of touching down some distance away and off-loading the Dragons to make their own approach to the objective. The Marines of first platoon found 682 of the 793 rifles the records on the Marquis de Rien said Sam Patch's crew had traded for the gizzard stones.

  Without ammunition, the rifles—the weapons the Cheereek had used so proudly—would clearly now only be useful as clubs. And not very good clubs at that. As a result, it was postulated, the weapons were left behind as the useless things they were.

  The Marines had no way of knowing it, but 108 of the missing rifles were in the guano pit, thrown there in disgust by departing warriors. Tschaah, thinking of a time in the future when Clumsy Ones might return, hid three away in a place only he knew.

  There was one thing the Marines looked for that they didn't find. As hard and as long as they searched, they couldn't find a single spent cartridge. They didn't know that though the weapons might be worthless, the shinies they left behind when they were fired made for the best decorations any Cheereek had ever seen. They didn't leave any shinies behind.

  The Philosopher

  The soldiers bundled Waakakaa the Philosopher into a sedan pulled by eeookks and drew its curtains. They hauled him in this way, unseen by passersby, to the rear of the Palace of the High Priest. There, in rude manner, they made him dismount. Waakakaa found himself standing in front of a small, unmarked entrance tucked away in a sharply curved alleyway that ran around this portion of the palace wall. The facing buildings had no windows on the wall side, nor were their roofs as high as the wall. The alley was empty save for Waakakaa and the soldiers; no one saw them open the small door and hustle him through it.

  Inside, they took him to a chamber crudely hacked from the
stone upon which the palace perched. They roughly pushed him into the chamber, where he stumbled over something, fell onto the straw-strewn floor, and painfully banged his head against the back wall. The soldiers clanged the iron-barred door shut behind him and went away, having said not a word to him after their captain told Waakakaa he was under arrest, charged with heresy.

  Still dazed by the unexpectedness of his arrest, Waakakaa lay on the thin matting of straw for a few moments before pushing himself to his feet. By the unsteady light from a torch burning in the corridor opposite the barred door of the chamber, Waakakaa took stock of this place. There was almost nothing to take stock of. The chamber was less than the length of a stretched-out person in depth, its width so narrow an adult could not drop into threat posture across it. A person could not even stretch his neck to full height. A perch, the object over which he had stumbled and fallen, stood barely above the floor in the middle of the chamber. In a corner beyond the perch he saw a ceramic pot. The fetid odor that wafted from it made clear what its purpose was.

  Waakakaa the Philosopher shuffled around so he faced the door and settled himself on the poor excuse for a perch to wait. The perch was so close to the floor that he had to uncomfortably adjust his position to keep his tail-nub from resting on the floor.

  In that hunched-over position, he examined the floor. The straw on it was thin, more a strewing than a matting. He saw small, sudden movements in the straw and lowered his head to better see what made them. Carapaced insects skittered through the straw, as did many-legged slitherers. Here and there, clutched triumphantly in mandibles, he saw indistinguishable bits of something that was neither straw nor a grain of sand.

  Waakakaa didn't want to imagine what those somethings might be. Doing his best to ignore the crawling of his skin, he hiked his tail-nub higher above the floor and tucked his robe in close so it did not trail in the straw. Waakakaa had no desire to contribute indistinguishable bits of himself to those triumphant mandibles.