Analog Science Fiction and Fact 01/01/11

by Dell Magazines

  “You very clever, friend. How transparent this unworthy one, that you see through her so!”

  “And the Manjrin makes you seem sinister.” Donovan, now loosened from his straps, stood up and rubbed his arms. Olafsdottr held out her hand and, after a moment, Donovan laid the key in it. “You didn’t have to pull them so tight, you know.”

  “Yes,” she said gravely. “I did.”

  “Anything interesting happen while I was tied up?”

  Olafsdottr cocked her head nearly sideways. “Should something have?”

  “Never mind.” He stepped past her. “I’m hungry. Let’s do lunch.” He didn’t wait to see if she followed, or if she held her teaser aimed at the small of his back. A teaser wouldn’t kill him anyway; not like a dazer would. But it could hurt like hell, and make you wish it would.

  The scarred man rustled his own lunch: daal and baked beans and sautéed mushrooms, with scrambled eggs and cold, fatty bacon drawn from the cold well in the pantry. Olafsdottr recoiled from this concoction when he brought it to the refectory.

  “Why?” asked the Fudir. “How do you break your fast?”

  Olafsdottr toyed with her teaser, remaining out of reach of her prisoner. “What any sensible one eats. A soft-boiled egg enthroned on a cup with its large end sheared off, a small plate of fruits of varied colors—green melon, yellow pineapple, white wintermelon— arranged as to best effect. A cup of pressed coffee thick enough to stand a spoon upright.”

  The Fudir regarded her curiously. “I would think espresso would be the last thing you would need. No wonder you always seem so wired. You should try Terran food some day.”

  She regarded his lunch with disfavor. “Perhaps I will. Someday.”

  “So, it’s been a quiet couple of days?”

  “With you bound in bunk, how could it be other?”

  Well, said the Sleuth internally, Rigardo-ji would not have taken her on by himself. He’s lying doggo.

  As from a distant room, Inner Child heard the muffled sound that had bounced past the scarred man’s head several times during his detention. A glance at the courier showed that she, too, heard.

  Best not pretend we don’t hear it, the Sleuth advised them. Keeping mum would invest it with more significance in her mind.

  “What’s that noise?” the Fudir asked, twisting his head as if to locate it. “Something wrong with the ship? Maybe we ought to lay up for repairs here in Megranome.”

  Olafsdottr smiled slowly, held it for a moment, then allowed it to fade as slowly. “Always carping the diem, my sweet. Perhaps you have set something rolling about the ship to convince me to stop for repairs and so give you an opportunity to escape. There would be no such escape, of course, but I will withhold the opportunity and save you the frustration.”

  “I did all this while tied up?” Donovan said. “If something has broken loose . . .”

  “Nu-nu-nu, sweet. You shall come with me to Henrietta. Great deeds await you. Tomorrow,” she added with a sniff, “make a different meal. This one stinks.”

  But the malo deur lingered all day and the circulators could do nothing to dissipate it. By the next day’s breakfast both Donovan and Olafsdottr had drawn the same conclusion, very nearly at the same time.

  “Not your food,” said Olafsdottr. “Stink come elsewhere.”

  Donovan wrinkled his nose. “There is something familiar about it.”

  “Agreed. But the nose is the most easily deceived of organs. It remembers well, but will not reveal those memories. Does not one of your shards have memory?”

  Donovan was not sure how much Olafsdottr knew of his condition, but saw no reason to deny it. “The Pedant. But he remembers facts, not sensations.”

  The Confederate sniffed. “Perhaps that which broke loose has caused something to burn out. Yet, it does not have the tang of burning.”

  “It has the smell of rot. Perhaps the protein vats have gone bad.”

  Olafsdottr viewed him with suspicion. “If you have sabotaged our food supply, it will be a long, hungry time to Henrietta. You very naughty boy, slip between the quanta of my notice.”

  “We could go check the vats.”

  “We? I should let you near the vats?”

  “Because, darling, you won’t go check them yourself while leaving me free run of the ship.”

  The Confederate stood upright from her post at the doorway. “Could tie you up again, but too much bother. Put away your breakfast things and come with me, then, and we see what new surprise you prepare.”

  The protein vats were fully automatic and hermetically sealed. In them grew mounds of flesh cloned from highly regarded ancestors known as “esteemed cells.” The judicious metering of flavorings and odorants imparted the likeness and even the texture of poultry and pork, of fish and beef, of legume and root. Like begets like, chemists chanted, and so, fed upon wastes, the “mother” deep in the heart of each vessel enrobed itself in tissues like unto themselves, to be shaved off, harvested, pressed, pumped to the molder, and served.

  The vat room was inboard of the Alfven drivers and forward of the impulse cage. The space was cramped and as cool as the cold well in the pantry. Despite the seals on the vats and on the conveyance hoses, odors slipped through the seams and teased the nose with the rich, earthy scent of potato and carrot, with the iron aroma of beef, with the dank stench of fish.

  Beneath it all the sweetish smell of something else.

  The ship’s architect had not supposed that pilots en route would have much reason to crawl around the vat room. Fresh bulk canisters were installed via external cargo doors at sutler stations and farmers’ markets in the high coopers. But neither was the room non-negotiable, since a pilot might need on occasion to refasten a hose or close a valve.

  However, two people squeezing through the space was more than the architect had imagined. Olafsdottr eased matters a bit by reducing the strength of the gravity grids in the vat room by two-thirds, but she still crowded close behind him.

  The stink grew worse behind the fish vat, and this was not due entirely to the faux-catfish accumulating inside it. Squeezing between it and the neighboring legume vat, Donovan spied one of the smuggler’s secret rooms, now wide open and lit. He paused in his contemplation to consider what he might tell his captor.

  KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, said the Pedant. KEEP SECRET WHAT WE KNOW.

  On the other hand, said the Silky Voice, there are tactical benefits to knowing that your opponent knows what you know.

  Ow, Silky! My head hurts.

  “Fudir?” said Donovan. “What do you think?”

  “It may need all of us together to get through this. That right, Sleuth?”

  Some data are still lacking. Add the facts together and there is still a hole in the middle; but . . .

  “Ja, but.” The Terran withdrew from his position and sat under Olafsdottr’s calculating gaze. “What is it, my sweet?” she said. “You can tell Ravn.”

  Donovan turned to her. “Follow me,” he said, “but keep your eyes peeled for someone else. We’re not alone on this ship.”

  “Ah. I had begun to wonder.”

  There was a torque wrench clipped to the fish vat for use in turning valves. Olafsdottr said nothing while he unfastened it, and that silent acquiescence to his arming was the loudest thing the Confederate had said so far.

  “This is a smuggler’s ship,” the Fudir said, “and it’s honeycombed with secret rooms, passages, and caches. When you hijacked it, the smuggler was aboard, drunk, in one of those rooms. Probably this one. He was afraid to act alone—”

  “A man of much wisdom, then.”

  “So he solicited my help to retake the ship.”

  “And, of coorse, you tendered it. Ooh. I knew you had been a nooty buoy. What befell, then, seeing I am still in charge?”

  “He said he knew of a weapon aboard. Something the People of Foreganger were sending to assassinate the Molnar over a bit of piracy and massacre—”

  Olafsdottr snorte
d. “The difference between the Cynthian pirates and the People’s Navy is a matter of the number and quality of the ships at their disposal. But say on.”

  “I was supposed to distract you, and he would shoot you from behind.”

  Donovan did not elaborate on that and waited to see how the Confederate would react.

  Olafsdottr regarded him with the stillness of a serpent. The white of her eyes and teeth, so prominent against her coal-black skin, took on some of the seeming of ice. “So,” she said at last, and patted him on the cheek. “You are a good buoy, after all. When all is said and done, and the struggle is ended, I will personally escort you home and see that you are buried with all honor.” She gestured with her teaser. “Lead on.”

  Much became clear when Donovan slipped behind the vats and entered the secret room. It was a small room, but contained a chair and table as well as an open safe. The Fudir thought it might have been used as a sort of den by the smuggler, extra room in an otherwise cramped ship.

  I thought the smell was familiar, said the Silky Voice. The Brute and Inner Child immediately assumed guardian positions, listening at the ears, watching through the corners of the eyes.

  Rigardo-ji Edelwasser lay sprawled on his back on the floor, arms splayed, mouth agape and bloody, as if he had been punched in the teeth by an iron fist. The wall behind the chair was spattered with blood, and bone, and bits of brain. On the table before the chair stood open a standard bushel-sized shipping container, and beside it a beautifully carved wooden chest, also open.

  The chest was Peacock orangewood, from which skilled knifework had brought out vines and fruits and other figures. The interior was lined with silk over shaped foam dunnage, but it was not clear from the shape what it had once held.

  Olafsdottr had crowded into the room behind Donovan and, like him, made no move to cotton her nose against the smell. “How long has he lain here?” she asked.

  “By the odor and bloating, the Pedant says, four days.”

  Olafsdottr nodded slowly. “And now you know why he did not appear at the ambush. A good thing, too, for I think he would have botched it.”

  Donovan turned and looked at her. “Why do you say that?”

  She pointed to the empty box. “He came to get the weapon and managed to kill himself with it. Such mishandling does not lend confidence.”

  Donovan stared at the dead man, wondering if he had been uncharitable in his thoughts. Granted, the ambush site had been too well configured for killing both Olafsdottr and Donovan, but he had only the Sleuth’s deductions and Inner Child’s fears on that. “I don’t think it matters anymore.”

  “But it does, my sweet; for where is the weapon that once sat in this wonderful box?”

  Donovan had not been paying attention to the kill space, but the Sleuth and others had been.

  He was sitting in the chair when he picked it up, said the Sleuth. It fi red upon his mishandling, and he jerked back, then slid forward, feet first. The weapon would have dropped to the floor and perhaps rolled a bit. There is not much room here for it to roll very far, yet there is no sign of it. Conclusion: the weapon is self-mobile. Based on the dunnage in which it nestled, it would be the size of a ruggerball—the ellipsoidal kind used on Hawthorne Rose.

  Olafsdottr meanwhile had rolled the body aside, perhaps thinking the weapon underneath. What she found was a gaping wound in the back of the skull, as if that iron fist had punched its way out of the brain. “A bore hole through his head!” she said, bending over and looking through it. “Entry through the soft palate, up through the midbrain and the parietal lobe, and smashing out between the occipital and the parietal bones. Alas, his speech center is destroyed, so he cannot tell us what happened.”

  Donovan grunted.

  The Shadow shrugged. “I would have liked to question him. What was this weapon that so badly backfired on him?”

  “It was called the Frog Prince on the shipping manifest.”

  Olafsdottr grinned. “Busy buoy! And what be the nature of this ‘Frog Prince’?”

  “We’re not sure. But there are Terran legends,” he said. “It was to be a trap for the Molnar.” He looked again at the smuggler’s body and the piercing wound through his head. “If I were you, and I saw it hopping about, I wouldn’t try to kiss it.”

  Rigardo-ji was stupid, he decided. Like many petty scramblers, he could think from point A to point B, but not beyond it to point C. He had read between the lines and believed Foreganger’s present to the Molnar was a weapon, vengeance for the massacre of the Merryv Starinu, but it had never occurred to the treacherous little beast that the weapon had been meant to kill its user.

  “So,” said Olafsdottr. “’Tis loose.” She looked about the room and went to the door to listen. Save for the normal susurrus and hum of the engines, the ship was quiet. The pork vat, out of sight of the doorway, hissed and a valve turned with a heavy clunk. The Confederate, already strained to hear sounds, jerked a little, though only a little, and her teaser moved fractionally. “But so long as we do not kiss this . . . Frog Prince . . . we need not fear it?”

  Donovan shook his head. “I would not hope so easily. It was designed to trick the Molnar into kissing it, but that trick would not have worked more than the once. It must have been designed, after the initial kiss, to seek out targets of opportunity in his stronghold—which I think to the People of Foreganger, that would mean anything on Cynthia that moved, man, woman, or child. It is the sort of boundless vengeance the People are famous for. Abyalon is more gently bred, and if word of this ever comes out, more than one national government there will fall. Meanwhile, we are in a pocket. We best back out and seal off the entry into the main part of the ship.”

  In the silence that followed, they heard the distant clang of a leaping object.

  “It must listen for sounds of life,” the Sleuth whispered through the scarred man’s lips, “and then home in on them. Quick,” added the Brute. “And quiet.”

  It was a measure of the Confederate’s concern that she turned her back on Donovan to leave the hidden room, and he with his knuckles white around a wrench. It was a measure of his concern that he took no advantage. One swipe, he thought, and I will see my daughter, after all. And Bridget ban.

  You would see them, said the young man in the chlamys, but could you look them in their eyes?

  He slipped out of the room close behind the Confederate, and they moved cautiously from behind the fish vat, pausing to listen at each step. They heard another spring, closer this time.

  It must leap like a frog, the Sleuth deduced, maintaining the metaphor. A certain artist’s pride informed the death-techs of Foreganger.

  “If we can close the door on it, we may breathe easier,” whispered Olafsdottr. “His Highness may bounce around the hidden passageways to his mechanical heart’s delight, but so long as he is confined there, we need not fear him.”

  “At least until it finds its way accidentally into the open part of the ship.”

  She turned to look at Donovan. “You are the cheerful one. How?”

  “It may not know from doors, but it might strike a jamb-plate by dumb luck. Unless you can deactivate… No? Ah, well, it’s a small ship, but there are too many conduits, chambers, channels, cable runs, hollow spaces. And too many spaces, openings, gaps, apertures give access. Eventually, Froggie will find his way through.”

  A relief valve hissed and Donovan jerked, accidentally striking a standpipe with his wrench. The clang reverberated though the piping and, on its diminution, they heard the bounding sounds of the Frog Prince stop, then increase in frequency. It was no longer hunting a direction; it had found one. “Quick,” he said, and pushed Olafsdottr on the rear.

  They scrambled now, not bothering with silence. Donovan wondered if the Frog Prince would deduce from the sounds the direction they were headed and cut them off.

  Olafsdottr reached the door and pulled herself through. The gravity grids on the other side were set to normal, so she stumbled,
and momentarily blocked the exit. For an instant, Donovan wondered if she would slam the door in his face to ensure her own safety.

  But it had never been her intent to destroy Donovan. And that explained his own prior hesitations. Had she planned to kill him, he would have had no qualms about striking first. But her goal had been to deliver Donovan hale to Henrietta. That he was disinclined to go there, or that whatever befell afterward was bound to be hazardous, was not grounds enough to justify a cold-blooded killing.

  Yer just outta practice, the Brute suggested.

  “Hurry, sweet!” said Olafsdottr.

  And Inner Child saw to the left his majesty, the Frog Prince.

  A squat and ugly thing, like a toad, but gleaming of chrome, with great blue piston legs and adhesive grippers, large black-lens eyes, its deep blue, black-spotted façade gore-spattered with Rigardo-ji’s brains. It leapt atop a conduit three arm’s-lengths off facing the scarred man. Its mouth opened wide, and made a long, deep rippling sound.

  The Silky Voice, from her seat in the hypothalamus, flooded the scarred man with adrenaline. Time itself seemed to slow.

  Donovan knew that if he turned his back to run through the door, he would be a dead man. His only chance was to face it down. With a wrench. It won’t fire a projectile, said the Sleuth. Trust me. And even the Sleuth’s voice seemed sluggish and drawn out. It will need to leap closer.

  As if on command, the Frog Prince leapt again, and landed on a primary lock valve. Its face bore the fatuous, evil smile of a frog. Once more, its lips opened wide, and inside its jaws, a coil of memory metal unwound and shot forth like a lance of steel. Yes, he heard the Sleuth say, I thought as much, The metaphor is complete.

  Even under normal circumstances, the Brute had been trained to lightning-fast reflexes. With the boost the Silky Voice was providing, he could move faster still. He swung the wrench—as it seemed, through gelatin. The long, sharp tongue arced toward him.

  The wrench connected, and knocked the reddened steel ribbon aside so that it penetrated like a nail into the side of the poultry vat. That’s how it killed the smuggler. There had probably been an instruction: “Kiss to activate.” Rigardo-ji had never had a chance. The steel ribbon would have uncoiled into his mouth and out the back of his head. Likely, he died without ever knowing he had died.