My head hurt badly. My one comfort was the knowledge that I would soon die and end the pain.
“You are not going to die.” A high voice removed that hope.
I sat up; my head did not fall off.
“You vavacq have no tolerance for ethanol, why do you imbibe it?”
“One drink, and not a large one.”
“Yes, only one drink, but its trace impurities had a powerful effect upon you.”
“You drugged me!”
“It was the easiest way to get you here without complications.”
I had been kidnapped. Some ship must want a General Maintainer (Probationary) very much. “Where am I? Who are you?”
“Open your eyes, vavacq! I will fix your pain.”
The pain vanished; I could have become rich on Mrrthow if I knew how to do that. I opened my eyes, slowly this time. There was an alien of a type I had never seen before. He(?) was tall, slim, covered with a golden down and almost glowing. This creature was beautiful.
“Trapelo Sector. It is so much more pleasant here without the prying eyes of interfering busybodies. You need not know who we are. Ask why you are here.”
“Why am I here?”
“We have a proposal of mutual advantage. Something that you will enjoy as much as we will.”
“What do you want from me?”
“A better question would be—what can we gain together?”
“What can we gain together?”
“Pleasure.”
“Pleasure? How?”
“You are a vavacq. The humans hate you and you hate the humans.”
“It’s the generally prevailing opinion,” I allowed. The alien looked at me silently, then continued.
“Between you and the human on your ship exists massive hatred, contempt, and other strong emotions.
For your pleasure, we have brought her here.” One of the walls thinned and vanished—and suspended there was Lady Susan.
I had never seen more of Lady Susan than her hands or face. Her body was brown and almost furless. She was clearly a mammal with two gross breasts. “She is yours. We give her to you.”
This was moving too fast. “Why do I want her— and for what?”
“For eons, her species and yours have been locked in battle. They devastated your planets, killed your people, destroyed your culture. Now, you can attain personal revenge. Take it.” A wave of dark eroticism swept through my mind. I imagined myself doing things that I had never before imagined. There was a seductive pleasure underlaid with a righteous indignation against this enemy of the vavacq. The pleasure would be justified; nothing I could do to Lady Susan would be wrong. I turned to the alien. “What’s in it for you?”
“We are connoisseurs of emotions. We will record yours and hers and enjoy them over and over again. This costs you nothing. The more your enjoyment, the keener our pleasure; the more pain she suffers, the more piquant the counterpoint. The Creator made you and the humans to contend forever.”
I walked to where Lady Susan was hanging. She was conscious.
“Hello,” I said. “Nice to see you again.”
She spat at me; her aim was fine. “Slime! I will not lower myself to beg for mercy. See how a human dies.”
“I need a sharp knife, about this long,” I said, holding my paws out. “My claws are not sufficient for what I want to do.” The alien smiled and soon I was holding a beautiful blade. I reached up left, then right, and cut the bonds holding Lady Susan. Then I cut her feet free.
The alien, who had been silent, snarled, “What are you doing?”
“Cutting her loose. Now, if we can have her clothing, we’ll be leaving.”
“This is not permitted.”
“You said I could do with her as I chose. I choose to set her free.” I found that the aliens could transmit emotions as well as receive them. It started as just pain—an ache in all my teeth. A crescendo of pain that transformed as my joints exploded. I was put into a locked iron box; the walls started pressing in even as they became red- and then white-hot. I had to get out, get the key, unlock the box. The pain eased.
“This is only a sample of what we can do. Yield. Perform. Pleasure can be yours, not pain. Join with us.” And a wave of undiluted pleasure racked me. It was worse than the pain because some of the horror was from within. “Will you consent?”
Consent was important; they could not force me. They could torture me and could tempt me, but the final decision would be mine. I tried to resist, but what weapons did I have? Use your personal imagination. That was the message through the computer. Did it mean anything? The alien drew back. It meant something.
I had a breathing space. I would have to fight back with my mind; use my imagination to counter the pain. I went through a sequence of battles from my CR readings—giant spaceships with ravening lances of energy, long-range ray guns in a post-civilized culture, magic swords to destroy demons, amulets to protect against monsters that lived between dimensions. My mind created the ability to conquer the alien with mind power.
There was a colorless flash, and then nothing. I awoke to see both the alien and Lady Susan were slumped on the floor. I put the knife in my belt. Lady Susan was unconscious but breathing. I didn’t check the alien because I didn’t care.
I tried to dress Lady Susan in my outerwear but gave up. It’s harder to dress a female than to undress one. I tore down a wall hanging, cut off a strip for a belt, rolled Lady Susan into it, and tied it off. It lacked style, but I thought it would serve. I half-carried, half-dragged her back into the area in which I had first awakened and then out a portal into the light.
I was in Trapelo Sector and I needed to get both of us back to the ship, fast. I knew where we were and I knew where the ship was, but I didn’t know how to get from here to there. There were transport modules, but my kidnappers had emptied my pockets and Lady Susan didn’t have any pockets.
I saw a communications kiosk down the corridor, and carried her into it, closing the door behind us. It was clearly not designed for two. There was access to emergency services, but it cost; nothing is free here. But thankfully there was the equivalent of a reverse charge call.
A watch officer agreed to pay for 15 seconds—more out of boredom than anything else. His Lobote jaws opened in surprise as my face appeared on his screen. “You? What do you mean by . . .”
“Quiet. Me. Lady Susan. Trapelo Sector. Send help fast.” And the screen went blank. I turned to open the door. There was a crowd outside armed with knives. (Actually, there were only five of them, but five was enough of a crowd for me.) I held the door shut as the largest moved forward to pry it open. I concentrated on keeping the door shut. I was losing. I took out my knife, pulled the door instead of pushing, had the satisfaction of seeing the large one fall down. I jumped out and crouched into what I thought was a knife-fighter’s stance. In the stories I had read, the heroes get some sort of training in these things; someone had screwed up here. I invoked the epic heroes to help me, but this was not the mental combat I had just been in.
The fellow in the green dress leaped in and slashed at my left arm. I blocked most of this, but it caused a shallow cut that hurt. Blood started dripping down.
I stepped back and hit the kiosk and slipped. This saved me from another’s jab. The big guy had gotten up and yelled for his accomplices to step back. He took out a knife, balanced it in his hand, and threw it at me. Pain ripped through my left shoulder. Another knife and my right shoulder was pierced. I dropped my own blade as my arm convulsed. He was playing with me. “Dance around. Give me a challenge.”
I snarled something unpleasant about his family and their breeding habits. Some concepts are universal, for he stopped, took careful aim, and threw. Right in the gut.
My vision blurred; I heard noises; I fell unconscious to the ground.
I awoke flat on my back. I tried to get up and escape, but I was tied down. I was in a medical facility. Hoses were dripping things into my body. I hoped everything w
as proper for a vavacq but if it wasn’t there wasn’t much I could do about it. The medical people wouldn’t have gone to the trouble if they didn’t think it would work. I croaked out some noise. A Lobote came over. “Go back to sleep.” Something cold touched my skin. I went back to sleep.
I woke a number of times and slept a number of times. Once when I woke, the captain was there. “You did a good job saving Lady Susan. Your pay will not be debited for overstaying your leave. Return to duty as soon as possible.” It is nice to be appreciated. I went back to sleep. The medical connections had been removed. The medtech told me I would be able to leave tomorrow. The decks and tables must be getting dirty without me. I couldn’t imagine anyone else in the crew who could perform my tasks to the standards I had set.
I was lying in bed waiting for the medtech to kick me out when Lady Susan, back in ship’s uniform, came in. She looked down on me in my bunk. Whatever she was going to say was going to be difficult. “I was told what happened. There is an obligation between us,” she said. “You are vavacq slime, but there is a bond between us; this is intolerable.” She hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that, but her training and culture forced it upon her.
‘Think nothing of it. Glad to have been of help. You must have important work to do.”
“No. If you make light of this, you give no value to my life. This must be resolved; the bond must be severed. Tell me why you did as you did. You did not act as any other of your people would have. I cannot understand this. I would not have done this for you had our roles been reversed.”
“Maybe that’s why I did it. The cycles must be stopped.” That last popped out; I hadn’t intended to say it and I wasn’t quite sure I meant it.
She stared at me. “Of all the aliens I have ever met, you are the most alien of all.”
“I take that as a high compliment,” I said.
She turned and left without another word.
I turned onto my side and something poked me. The medtech must have forgotten to remove all the equipment. I reached down and picked it up. There in my paw was a silvery ring, but there was a break. One end pointed up—searching?
Back to Contents
HI, COLONIC by Harry Turtledove
S
OME PEOPLE SAY probing other planets for intelligent life is an exciting, romantic job. As far as I’m concerned, that only goes to show they’ve never done it. Me, I do it for a living, and I’m here to tell you it’s nothing but a pain in the orifice. The air smells funny even when you can breathe it, the animals smell even worse (and taste worse than that, half the time), and even when we do find people, they’re usually backward as all get-out. If they weren’t, they would have found us, right? Right.
Another planet from space. If I’ve sensed one, I’ve sensed a thousand. Third planet from a medium-heat sun. Water oceans. Oxygen atmosphere. Life. Oh, joy. We weren’t even the first ones here. This place had been checked a bunch of times over the past fifty local years. Always nothing. So why did we go back again? Orders. If I don’t do the work, they don’t pay me. Even when I do do the work, they don’t pay me enough, but that’s a different story.
Down we went, into the atmosphere. Iffspay—he’s my partner—and I rolled dice to find out who got stuck wearing the calm suit. I give you three guesses. The calm suit we needed for this planet is the most uncomfortable one in the whole masquerade cabinet.
It’s bifurcated at the bottom, it’s got tendrils near the top, and then an awkward lump at the very top. Guess who got to put it on. I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t Iffspay. I think he uses loaded dice.
“This is all a waste of time,” I grumbled.
“We’re here. We might as well do it,” Iffspay said. He would. Of course he would. He got to lie back in the ship and soak up nutrient while I was out there doing the heavy lifting.
The atmosphere on this one was really noxious, too. Way too much carbon dioxide for a stable climate, plus oxides of nitrogen and assorted vile hydrocarbons. I made damn sure the purifier in the calm suit was working the way it was supposed to. You could fry yourself on air like that.
To add insult to injury, the weather was fermented. Antigravity or not, round flat aerodynamic shape or not, we bounced around enough to turn your insides inside out. Iffspay was doing the flying, which didn’t help. As a pilot, he doesn’t know his appendages from a hole in the ground. I thought he was going to fly us into a hole in the ground, but he didn’t. Don’t ask me why. Somebody out beyond the cosmos must like him. Don’t ask me why about that, either.
Rain pounded us. “I’m supposed to go out in this?” I said.
“I would have done it if I’d lost the roll,” Iffspay said virtuously. He would have bitched all the way, too. Am I lying? If you’ve ever met Iffspay, you’ll know I’m not. You can’t tell me that’s not him, segment by segment.
“Just find some of them so we can run the tests,” I said. “We’ll get another negative and we’ll go on to another world. And when it comes to finding out who wears the calm suit next time, I’m going to roll your dice.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, as if he didn’t know. Ha!
Before we could really start quarreling, the heat-seeker indicated a target. Three targets, in fact, grouped close together. That actually cheered me up. If we caught all three of them, we could finish this planet in one fell swoop. I wouldn’t miss putting it behind me, not even a little bit I wouldn’t.
Trouble was, they were at the edge of a swamp. I worried that they might escape into the water or into the undergrowth, calm suit or no calm suit, before I could slap the paralyzer ray on them and we could antigravity them up into the ship. And if they did—if even one of them did—we’d have to go through this whole capture-and-release business somewhere else on the planet, too. Once was plenty. Once was more than plenty, as a matter of fact.
“As we lower, put on the full display,” I told Iffspay.
“We’re liable to scare them off,” he warned.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “If we do, we’ll try somewhere else, that’s all. But the data feeds say they usually gawk. They’re photosensitive, you know.”
“All right, already.” Iffspay complained, but he did it the way I wanted. He had to, pretty much. If he’d been going out, I would’ve done it his way. I wondered how much the rain would hurt the locals’ photosensitivity. Light is so unreliable. Since most planets rotate, half the time there isn’t any. Evolution does some crazy things sometimes.
I have to give Iffspay credit. He didn’t fool around when it came to the display. He had it radiating every frequency the locals could perceive, going from the high end to the low in rhythmic waves. He cranked the air vibrations way up, too. I could sense some of those myself. They seemed to go right through me.
I checked the heat-seeker. By the taste, the locals hadn’t moved. That meant—I hoped that meant—they were fixated on the show the ship was putting on. I struggled into the calm suit and went down to the exit orifice. “I’m ready,” I told Iffspay, exaggerating only a little. “Go on and shit me out.”
The mild obscenity made him mumble to himself, but out I went, floating in midair. Rain thudded against the calm suit. Considering all the crap in the atmosphere, the rainwater probably wouldn’t have done me much good either. Maybe I was lucky being in the suit, even if it was uncomfortable.
And the locals still didn’t try to escape. I can’t tell you exactly how much I resembled them—how do you evaluate a sense you haven’t got yourself?—but it must have been close enough for government work. I was glad the suit had its own powered heat-seeker; the rain would have played hob with the one I was hatched with, which naturally isn’t anywhere near so strong.
I wanted to get really close before I paralyzed them, for fear all that water coming down out of the sky would attenuate the beam, too. And I did. I got so close, my instruments could tell they were emitting air vibrations themselves. The ones from the ship had much more pleasing patterns, but
I wasn’t there to play art critic.
Ready . . . Aim . . . The calm suit’s appendages aren’t as sensitive as real ones, so I squeezed the control inside just as hard as I could. “Got ‘em!” I told Iffspay. “Bring me back, and bring them in, too.”
“Keep your integument on,” Iffspay said. There are times when I’m tempted to turn the paralyzer on him. Leaving him unable to communicate would be all to the good. That’s what / think, and nobody’s likely to make me change my mind.
Up went the locals, one by one. Iffspay saved me for last, just to annoy me. He did, too, but I wasn’t about to let him smell it when I got back to the ship. He was bustling around when the antigravity beam finally pulled me back aboard. The locals were all lined up neatly, ready for us to start doing our latest check. Two of them emitted significantly more heat than the third, which meant they had more body mass.
All three of them also went on emitting high amplitude air vibrations. “Why are they doing that?” Iffspay asked irritably. “Aren’t they supposed to be paralyzed?”
I had to check the manual before I could answer him. “It says paralysis only inhibits gross motor functions. If it inhibited all movements, they’d die.”
I got out of the calm suit. I didn’t need it anymore, and we’d made the capture. The paralyzed locals weren’t going to interfere. As I put it back in the closet, the amplitude of their air vibrations increased even more. “They’re still sensing us somehow,” I said. “Those waves have to be voluntary.”
Now it was Iffspay’s turn to check the manual. Yeah, yeah, I know—when all else fails, read the instructions. At last, he said, “I think they’re photosensitive to some of the wavelengths we use for heat-seeking.”
“Oh. All right.” That even made sense. “I wonder if those were alarm calls, then. They might have been surprised when they perceived me changing from something like their own shape to my own proper one.
“Who cares?” Iffspay said. “Let’s get them ana-lized, and then we can analyze the data—not that there’ll be any data to analyze. We’ll do it by the book, though.”
I, Alien Page 24
