Blade of p’Na

by L. Neil Smith

  A sign, when you looked that direction, popped into your visual cortex:

  CAFE OF ALL WORLDS

  There were two long, narrow islands in the great river here, and, across one of the pretty bridges, the restaurant was on the larger of the two. Inside, the place was a bit more crowded and a little noisier than I had expected, filled from wall to wall with beautiful females and their handsome escorts, all of them arrayed in their very finest finery.

  Hanging from high ceilings embossed with decorative patterns, old-fashioned four-bladed fans turned overhead, their motion reflected in crystal chandeliers, stirring the air without cooling the food too badly. Irresistible aromas floated through the atmosphere on a gentle current while great windows at both ends of the room not only allowed a view of streets on either side that artists never seemed to tire of painting, but—and more importantly—permitted passersby a chance to be lured into warmly lit hospitality, potential camaraderie, and a cornucopia of delicious temptations that the place was famous for affording.

  The only table available was next to one already occupied by a kind of being that neither of us recognized. The fellow was obviously a land-dwelling arthropod of some sort—no plastic suit—and an extraordinarily large one, at least nine feet tall, three feet wide, two feet thick through the thorax. His color was a dull pinkish orange. My implant immediately gave me the name of his species and a number and letter combination for the universe he came from, but it didn’t mean that much. Another Earth, owned and operated by great big bugs.

  It did say they had managed to reach the nearest stars. Good for them.

  He sat in a complicated chair—the restaurant was full of them—that was adaptable to his species, with his tail tucked under the table. As I had observed, he was an arthropod, with pairs of limbs spaced along the ventral side of his segmented body. The foremost pair ended in enormous pincers with intimidatingly serrated edges, although he manipulated his food and drink—a bowl of salad and a glass of red wine—delicately, with complex, specialized mouthparts, like a spider.

  Two of the fellow’s four eyes were mounted at the ends of finely segmented stalks a foot long, waving around constantly, occasionally peering over his back like twin periscopes. His other two eyes were larger, and set firmly into the sides of his basically triangular head.

  Seated in a nice, uncomplicated, comfortable booth. we placed our order—a genuine, living creature, dinosauroid, actually arrived at our table to take it—and we were left with an aperitif and some appetizers. Eichra Oren poured the wine. The dodo pate was quite good. First imported from west of the warmer Island Continent, the birds are now bred by the millions all over the planet for their livers alone. The rest of the strange animal tastes terrible to all but a few species.

  This lacking hands thing was a pain. I wished that I had a couple squid of my own or, since squid don’t do very well on land, a monkey. Trouble is, I’ve never heard of a symbiote having a symbiote. And I’m not sure there’s enough room in my head for the circuitry it would require.

  Also, as I said, I don’t like monkeys.

  Just then the waiter reappeared, bringing a big, steaming platter, which he set down in front of the nearby giant arthropod. The birdman fussed over the plate, going through all the waiter rituals, and departed.

  The arthropod picked up a knife and fork in his strange elongated mouthparts, then turned in his chair to look directly at Eichra Oren with three of his eyes. “I hope,” the fellow said, his synthetic voice dripping with sarcasm, “that what I’m eating doesn’t offend you, Mr. Humanoid.”

  He made wheezing noises I guessed were laughter. I took a look and cringed. To all appearances, what lay on the platter, surrounded in vegetables, was a roasted human baby. Our waiter set our plates before us.

  “Monkey?” Eichra Oren answered in a light, even tone. “Not by any means.”

  He nodded at his own plate and at mine. “We’re having lobster.”

  Despite the delightful dinner now set before me—some thoughtful individual in the kitchen had prepared my plate so that I didn’t have to ask for help with it; it had that perfect sweet-scorched aroma that is a major reason I love broiled lobster—I was anxious to discuss with Eichra Oren what we’d learned from our new client, the villainous Misterthoggosh.

  I remembered it just as if it were yesterday, probably because it was…

  As Eichra Oren slowly settled to the sandy bottom of the outsized fishtank that was the massive mollusc’s office on land—afterward, the boss hadn’t been inclined to talk about his first horrible breath of fluorocarbon, and I hadn’t asked—the pair of longer tentacles emerging at the other side of the room was followed by eight shorter ones, and then by a pair of the largest eyes I’ve ever seen. They were roughly the same diameter as the balls used in children’s kicky-ball games, and they were slitted exactly like those of a gigantic feline or maybe somebody’s demented pet goat. Finally, the great, coiled shell made its appearance; it was almost the size of Eichra Oren’s sportsveek.

  The shell was worth mentioning all by itself. Approximately the same height as my boss, it was divided into segments, each one with brightly-colored stripes that I was pretty sure were natural, minerals absorbed selectively from the waters in which they were formed. Each of them—a new one added every year, it says here, but given the old mollusc’s rumored age, I seriously doubted that—was noticeably larger than the one that had preceded it along the spiral, indicating that the impressive and powerful sapient parked before us had once been an itty-bitty snail, albeit an itty-bitty snail with squiggly little arms.

  It was fun to imagine. The Elders have never been particularly forthcoming about their reproductive biology or their subsequent development. Much of what we think we know is inferred from species that aren’t really that similar to the Elders, especially nautili, who can’t generate ink, and whose eyes, without corneas, are open to the sea.

  What’s generally understood seems so ridiculous that I don’t really blame them for being secretive about it. It is presumed, by those inclined to guess about such things, that they begin as eggs, deposited in some protected nursery somewhere in the Great Deep. It made sense: for millions of years, and despite their spiraled armor, small nautiloids have been the real “chicken of the sea” to predators like mosasaurs; crunchy on the outside, soft and gooey on the inside. It has also been speculated that the females of the Elders’ species aren’t really sapient beings at all and are only useful for sex and reproduction.

  I’ve known some human females like that.

  The monster shell had been hovering—nautiloids can control their buoyancy minutely—a couple of inches above the sand-covered floor, amidst bizarre sculptures and decorative plantings of kelp and other underwater vegetables. At the moment, the old boy was pulling himself along effortlessly with his two main tentacles. But when nautiloids are in a hurry, the big molluscs can propel themselves—backwards—with a powerful jet of water from their breathing siphons, and leave an assailant behind in a blinding cloud of darkness.

  They have also been known to sell it to write documents and dye garments. Better than being down and out and selling your own blood, I guess.

  At last, Misterthoggosh settled himself down behind a broad, flat rectangle of some greenish, smoothly-polished decorative stone set in the floor (his “desk”, I was assuming—I think it was jade) and spoke.

  “Eichra Oren, ethical debt assessor of the ancient and honorable School of p’Na. I must say that I am delighted finally to meet you. I have known your estimable mother very well for many years. And in that time—some of it, anyway—she has told me a great deal about you, all of it quite complimentary, I assure you, as is to be expected from a mother, I suppose. Nonetheless, I am Misterthoggosh, known as the Proprietor.”

  The boss nodded, noncommittally. Misterthoggosh lifted one of his longer tentacles—palps, it turns out they’re called, serving about the same purpose as a spider’s mouth manipulators of the same name—towar
d the human, who seized an edge of the thing enthusiastically, and shook it. Eichra Oren is a much braver individual than I’ll ever be.

  The great cephalopod pivoted his shell slightly toward me, making a scraping noise that set my teeth on edge. The great slitted eyes regarded me through the thick glass. “And I should also like to extend my greetings and felicitations to you, Oasam Otusam, of whom I also know a considerable amount. Yes, indeed, I can see and hear you, sir. You’re the hero who singlehandedly saved the poriferan Quindli from extinction.”

  That again.

  Please understand that the Quindli are sponges. And they really have no business being sapient, except for the strange and accidental fact that three hundred million years ago or so, on their own version of this planet, they acquired a parasite—nothing more than a tiny little soft-bodied worm, but with an unusually complicated nervous system.

  That tiny little worm then evolved into a tiny little symbiont (not quite the same kind of thing that I am, whatever that is, more like the “friendly” bacteria in your digestive tract), and then into a sort of semi-independent organ, like a chloroplast or a mitochondrion, and then…well, the light came on. The Quindli are very smart, but they still don’t do much except sit at the bottom of shallow seas, humming eerie music of their own composition, mostly millions of years old.

  Note that I say “mostly”. Call it bad luck, call it good luck, the Quindli next found themselves Appropriated by accident, hauled by main strength and awkwardness into the Elders’ alternity along with some species of sapient but relatively primitive octopi. Nobody on this side of reality realized what they’d done until some recreational divers off the westernmost edge of the northern Island Continent happened to be playing popular music through loudspeakers into the water.

  And the Quindli started to sing along.

  That area had been scheduled for construction of a resort where dry land and wet water folks could congregate. It has long been a popular stop for human and cetacean tourists, who seem to enjoy each other’s company for some reason. Construction crews and machinery were about to begin digging and seeding an underwater foundation which would probably have destroyed the Quindli, when, oblivious to their imminent extinction, but inspired by what they’d heard the divers playing, the sapient sponges began composing their first new music in millennia.

  I first heard about the strange singing, and even listened to it, online. Then I nagged Eichra Oren into investigating, despite serious misgivings on his part, and all of a sudden we had flown to the Island Continent, done a little digging—swimming, actually—officially declared discovery of a sapient species, and acquired thousands of new friends.

  And paying clients. The Quindli absorb precious metals—gold, silver, platinum, palladium, iridium, rhodium—from sea water, which contains a few atoms of each element per cubic meter, washed down from the land over billions and billions of years. It was mildly poisonous to their inner worms, and they were accustomed to isolating it in cysts or nuggets within their bodies. They were more than happy to part with it, in exchange for this and that. Debt assessor’s fees, for instance.

  Once the first recordings of their music began to sell, the sponge people became doubly wealthy. They bought the development company out, moved the planned resort up the coast a few thousand yards, and it eventually became a third source of poriferan income. “Come, see the silly simians swimming with cetaceans! Come hear the fabulous singing sponges!”

  I believe that someone called it “Box Office Boffo”.

  They always remember me on my birthday, by singing to me via implant.

  It was no big thing, believe me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Recruitment

  WHEN MISTERTHOGGOSH SPOKE, HIS LOW, RESONANT voice seemed to emanate from a pair of speakers mounted at either side of his desk. “Please be seated, sir. Will you have something to drink? I’m having beer.”

  Eichra Oren opened his mouth to speak, but ended up with an extremely puzzled expression. He pointed to his throat, shaking his head.

  “I do apologize, sir. It is possible to vocalize in this medium we are breathing, but only with a deal of training and practice. I use my cerebro-cortical faculties instead—yes, we nautiloids employ them, too—and I would suggest that you do the same. Now about that beer.”

  “I’d be delighted,” Eichra Oren told the giant mollusc, without moving his mouth. Why he’d suddenly decided that he could drink with this entity in good conscience defied my merely canine understanding. “Would it be possible to extend your hospitality to my associate, too?”

  Misterthoggosh emitted a deep, rolling laugh. “Of course I can. I assume he prefers a bowl—and pardon me Sam, if I may, for speaking of you in the third person. Aelbraugh Pritsch, will you please see to it?” The Elders don’t laugh in a state of nature. They don’t really vocalize except through radio-telepathy. So this was merely a special effect.

  “Yes, sir, immediately.” The birdman left the room. I was sitting on a little ottoman Aelbraugh Pritsch had supplied me with to watch the show. I’ve known a lot of strange sapients in my life. Our host was undoubtedly the strangest—and possibly the most sapient, as well.

  “I regret,” said our host, “that you are unable to enjoy your accustomed cigar, Eichra Oren. While it is thoroughly oxygenated, the fluid we are breathing carries heat away too quickly to support combustion.”

  “I shall endeavor to persevere,” the boss quoted an otherworldly entertainment—a movie—that we had both become particularly fond of. As Aelbraugh Pritsch returned, carrying a long-legged tray with a tall brown bottle and a very pretty bowl, Misterthoggosh reached down into a compartment underneath his desk surface, extracting a pair of flexible synthetic bags filled with a familiar-looking bubbly brown liquid, and equipped at one corner with a tricky valve and straw arrangement.

  “Manufactured and bottled,” the cephalopod told us, “in the middle of the northernmost of the western continents. If you’ll examine the label closely, Sam, you’ll see its trademark, one of the two-wheeled contraptions used by separable tentacles to run errands for their owners.”

  And there it was, a cheerful red and black machine with white- walled tires, not quite leaning up against a tree, more of a scooter than a bicycle. For some artistic reason, the tires looked excessively fat. The writing was in Old Antarctican and referred to the over-plump wheels.

  “But shall we discuss business, gentlebeings? I am not unaware of inquiries you have been making into my affairs. My purpose today is to assuage your concerns in that regard, and to enlist you in a related undertaking.”

  We’d hardly started our inquiries yet, being busy with the affair of the missing bridegroom—unless you counted what had happened to Ray.

  “Enlist us?” Eichra Oren was openly surprised, and I was, too. “Perhaps what you mean is to bribe us to keep our noses out of your business.”

  The monster lifted a long tentacle. “And perhaps not. When any individual achieves a certain level of fame or fortune—and it is a much lower level than you might anticipate—rumors inevitably begin to circulate with regard to the way he accomplished what he has. And certain types of individuals simply cannot believe that such successes are possible without engaging in chicanery, larceny, and possibly worse.”

  Misterthoggosh had emptied his baggie. He put it carefully into a “drawer” under the left side of his desk and extracted another from the right. Eichra Oren had hardly started his own beer. I had finished with mine, enjoying it immensely, but at least temporarily turned down another.

  “Very well, Misterthoggosh, let’s assume that there’s some truth in what you’re saying,”—Eichra Oren had been stringently trained to know whether someone was lying to him or not—“How would you prefer to proceed with this? Will you declaim, or do you prefer me to ask you questions?”

  “By all means, sir, ask questions. You’ll discover that I am a plain, straightforward dealer, Eichra Oren, and I’ll even undertake to answer q
uestions it does not occur to you to ask. That goes for you, as well, Sam. My greatest wish in this is to persuade you both to my cause.”

  Eichra Oren thought for a moment: “Okay, how about this for a start? Everybody seems to enjoy the entertainments that you extract from other universes and beam back to Earth from the Asteroid Belt, although—”

  “That’s highly gratifying,” the great nautiloid rumbled, then took another deep drink of his beer. “I confess that I rather enjoy them, myself.”

  Eichra Oren wasn’t through. “Although there are certain questions in my mind about your right to do that—or rather about the rights of the originators of those entertainments. But now some people are saying that you’re planning to open up another hole, a bigger one, and send individuals and equipment over there—wherever ‘there’ may be—possibly with the idea of starting the Appropriations all over again.”

  “And what do you say, Eichra Oren?” The giant mollusc took a drink of his beer, and for just an instant I could see his great, fearsome beak open wide as he squeezed the contents of the baggie into it. He didn’t show it, but if he was innocent, then this interrogation was probably making him mad. If he was guilty it was probably making him madder.

  Eichra Oren shrugged. “That I haven’t seen much evidence of any kind for the Appropriations claim, although it’s fairly obvious to anyone who looks that you’re preparing to do something monumental. In certain circles, it’s common knowledge that you’re constructing an equatorial spaceport on the plains across the Inland Sea. In fact, that’s what set me on your trail. Especially given your people’s infamous aversion to space exploration, I thought it bore looking into.

  His palps gave a shrug twenty-five feet wide. “Disinterest, my dear fellow, not an aversion. And it bore violating my right to privacy?” It was hard to tell, but I believed that the nautiloid was amused.

  Eichra Oren chose his words carefully. “No, it bore collecting what information was out there to collect, without violating your rights.”