Blade of p’Na

by L. Neil Smith

  At my instruction, Mio pulled out the flat transparent package with Ray’s brain implants on the foam inside it. By that time the boss and his would-be girlfriend had the captive Gray inside the house and propped up on the sofa like a particularly icky mummy. When Eichra Oren saw what we’d retrieved from his desk drawer, he nodded his approval.

  “Ray’s implants!” he said. “You’ll want the language package—that’s the little purple square one. You’re figuring that this creature’s neural functions are distributed widely enough that we can just lay the implant practically anywhere on its skin and get results, right?”

  “I’d start with the head,” I told him, conservative in my own way.

  He answered, “So would I, if only out of habit.” I had no idea whether this idea of mine would work. I didn’t know whether implants could attune themselves to their users or had to be attuned, somehow. It occurred to me then that I knew almost nothing about the technology that had made me what I am—whatever that is. Eichra Oren took the little metallic wafer out of the package and laid it on the creature’s forehead. Nothing happened for a longish moment—then it jumped and suddenly each of us could sense another sapient presence in the room.

  “I am Eichra Oren,” the boss said aloud. His implant broadcast the same information. He’d pulled up an office chair so he could sit and look directly at our guest where they’d sat him on the sofa. “Who are you?”

  There came no reply, either mentally or otherwise. The alien sat perfectly still, and if implants had employed carrier waves, that’s all we would have been hearing. That and crickets. But somehow we were all aware that the bizarre creature had heard Eichra Oren’s question perfectly well. My guess was that it believed it was resisting an interrogation by its captors, and, of course, that’s exactly what was happening.

  “This is the last time I’m asking,” said Eichra Oren, his voice and mental tone extremely grim and menacing. I could tell that he was putting it on, but I doubt the prisoner or even Lornis could. “Who are you?”

  Again there was no answer from our alien visitor, but the creature began thrashing around violently, straining hard at the gray utility tape wrapped around its wrists and arms and legs and ankles—or as close as it came to having parts like that. Maybe it thought it was worth tearing itself to bits in order to get away. It wasn’t entirely gelatinous, more like cold meatloaf in aspic. Perhaps it had gotten a mental glimpse of what Eichra Oren wanted it to believe he had in mind.

  I had, and it wasn’t pretty. I probably would have felt a lot more sympathy for the thing if I hadn’t watched through Ray’s own eyes as it, or one of its buddies, coldbloodedly murdered my friend—after attempting to run the boss and me off the road and firing a missile at us.

  With a hand on its chest, Eichra Oren pushed the creature back against the sofa. He pulled the little plasma weapon out of his tunic pocket and pointed it at the crotch of the creature’s gray coveralls. “This is what I wrecked your veek and shot your aircraft down with. Now sit still and tell me everything I want to know, or I’m going to shoot your dick off. This is a new gun to me, and it’s just a little bit unpredictable, so I’ll most likely take your balls off with it, too.”

  “My reproductive process is not the same as that of you mammals.” The voice inside our minds was amused, low, smooth, and sexually ambiguous. “And if it were, even a lowly vertebrate like you should be aware by now that anything you do to me will eventually heal or grow back.”

  “Okay, then,” Eichra Oren offered agreeably. “I guess I’ll just plink around a little until I find something that you don’t want shot off.”

  “It won’t do any good,” I told Eichra Oren, unable now to tell how serious he was being. Torture—and the threat of torture, too—was supposed to be against the rules of p’Na. “This could be the same one that Ray shot. They seem able to absorb a lot of abuse. Every function is distributed throughout their bodies and I’ll bet they also heal fast.”

  The boss nodded. “Right you are, Sam.” He stood up, put his gun away, and went to the kitchen. He came back immediately with a small container in his hand. “This is a highly volatile petroleum fraction,” he announced. In fact, it was only a bottle of Plumfizzle, the boss’s favorite soft drink. “I’m going to take you outside, pour it all over you, and light it. Then we’ll see how well-distributed your functions are.”

  The thing said, “Wait, wait, what is it that you want to know?” So our guest didn’t care much for the idea of being set on fire. For that matter, neither did I, not just because I hate the smell of burning fur.

  Eichra Oren said, “Who are you?”

  “I don’t know how to answer this question of yours, vertebrate,” it complained. “I don’t understand it. I am myself. What else could I be?”

  “To begin with, what’s your name? My name is Eichra Oren. His name is Oasam Otusam. Her name is Lornis Adubudu. His name is Mio. What’s yours?”

  “‘Name’,” it repeated, almost to itself. “You give each cell a unique designation all its own. How mind-consuming that must be, remembering and employing all of those letter combinations. This is better:”

  Instead of more words, we vertebrates were treated mentally to a complicated and confusing diagram. There was a long silence, then: “That’s genealogy,” Lornis said at last. “That’s some kind of family tree.”

  “It’s telling us who it is,” Mio said, “in terms of its familial relationships.”

  “Let me try something,” said Lornis. She closed her beautiful eyes and concentrated. What we saw was a considerably less complicated diagram showing the last three generations of the Adubudu family. For some reason the creature suddenly began thrashing around violently again.

  “Alfarz,” I observed. “It seems to focus on Alfarz Adubudu.”

  Lornis said, “My father. I think this thing wants to kill him.”

  Alfarz Adubudu was a businessman who specialized in catering to certain proclivities of which many individuals would be ashamed were they to become public knowledge. Pass a thousand laws, I thought, repeal them all; none has even a hundredth of the power of social approval or disapproval. If Alfarz were living in a civilization somewhere that outlawed the proffering of such goods and services, he’d have been considered a criminal kingpin. As it was, he did moderately well by supplying individuals with what they thought they needed.

  Eichra Oren leaned in on the creature. “Why would you kill Alfarz Adubudu?”

  As before, we didn’t get an answer in words, but in flashes, brief glimpses of Alfarz, of Semlohcolresh in Lanternlight, of Lyn Chow, of Hyppod Zart and his fellow tentacle-nosed friends, and oddly enough of Scutigera, and of Eichra Oren’s mother, Eneri Relda, each of them associated in its mind somehow with Misterthoggosh. There were also certain characters we recognized, but didn’t know: Asavivirsnajunamar (“THE name in Anti-Gravity”), another famous Elder, Semajytrairom, a media commentator, and Nombismocwen, who manufactured hoverveeks like Lornis’. There was a number of others, of several species, we didn’t know.

  “It doesn’t seem to understand how we organize ourselves,” Lornis suggested. “My mom died a couple of years ago, climbing a mountain on the Northwest Continent. Maybe it thought my dad lives in that tool shed.” That was funny for a couple of reasons. Among Lornis’ people, Homo gracilis, houses traditionally belong to the womenfolk, passing from mother to daughter, which was probably why he’d wanted his own place.

  “Stop me when I go wrong,” said Mio, ticking points off on his tiny Talapoin fingers. “What we have here are some violent criminals, killers of an unfamiliar species—these Grays—who are apparently descended from flatworms, have independently discovered crosstime travel, and are now here with some kind of list of people they want to kill.”

  “All because they have something to do with Misterthoggosh,” I observed, wondering why I hadn’t seen Aelbraugh Pritsch, Jakdav Hoj, or Mikado in the alien’s mental rogues’ gallery. Unimportant, I guessed. “The person
in this world who has the most to do with other worlds.”

  Eichra Oren rose. “Sam, my mother isn’t picking up, but she often turns her com off. Let’s head over to her place and make sure she’s all right. Maybe she can tell us why she’s on this strange creature’s list. Along the way, we’ll call the others and alert them to the danger.”

  “Mio and I will help with that,” said Lornis. “We’ll go with you, if you don’t mind, Eichra Oren, Sam. I’d feel a whole lot safer. I’m associated with Misterthoggosh, too, after all, through my father. I’ll send my veek home. I’m in contact with my dad this very minute. He’s doing business on the Island Continent and assures me he’s just fine.”

  She’d asked if I minded. Push that “I wish I were human” up a notch.

  “I thought you said you were going fishing with Alfarz today,” the boss informed her, rather than asking her, pretending to be a detective. The man seemed desperate to find some reason not to like this beautiful girl who wanted nothing more than to give herself to him.

  Lornis replied, “Tonight. He’s taking a ballistic flight home.” That’s the way to travel, I thought. Half a world away in ninety minutes.

  I decided that the subject could use changing. “Boss, what’re we gonna do with Captain Wormface, here? Gonna introduce it to your mother?”

  Eichra Oren laughed, “On the way over, we’ll drop it off with Misterthoggosh. He may have an idea or two of what to do with the creature.”

  The alien flatworm thing freaked when it heard that. Back it went, into the trunk, not peaceably, but kicking and wriggling without making a noise. Eichra Oren drove. Lornis sat beside him in the passenger seat.

  I sat behind her on the vestigial back seat with the Hammer-damned monkey.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Council of War

  THE BOSS CALLED AHEAD.

  Instead of parking at the curb when we got there, he pulled around to the east side of the Elder’s house—putting the shoreline to our left—into an open door wide enough for ten veeks. We’d been here once before, when we were “taken for a ride”. One of the dozens of machines parked inside was immediately familiar. It belonged to Eneri Relda.

  The four of us wondered what was going on.

  We were led from the garage by one of Aelbraugh Pritsch’s people—between the bird folk and a gaggle of plastic-wrapped nine-foot sea scorpions, we’d been greeted by at least a dozen and a half heavily-armed sapients on semi-alert—on a winding path through the Elder’s house.

  Despite the state of alert, at least some of the feathered brigade seemed to be on break, sitting in a small room off the hall at a table (perches, not chairs), round cards in their hands, playing contract whist or Go Frog or something, drinking kelp beer, and finger-nibbling at what looked like a big pan of fried cockroaches. Smelled like it, too. It’s always important to keep up the morale of the troops, I guess.

  Recorded music played in the background, although the bird folk might just as easily have played it through their implants. There’s no accounting for taste. To me it sounded like an entire orchestra composed of harps, tuned by an army of deaf harp tuners and played by monkeys, using their feet. I’d been told it was the latest, hottest thing—among dino-avians, that is. Somehow, it was worse than the cockroaches.

  Meanwhile, across the hall, their chitin-covered counterparts (the bird people’s, not the cockroaches’) appeared to be taking it easy, too. They didn’t seem the type for card games. They were consuming the same kelp beer, but with cheeseburgers (no, I don’t know how the sea scorpionoids got them through their watertight transparent bodysuits), all their attention seemingly focused (although a couple of eyestalks followed us across the open door as we passed by) on some variety of spectator sport on video, an obvious interworld import in which two heavily armored groups of humans employed L-shaped sticks to bash each others’ helmeted brains and push a little rubber disk around a frozen pond.

  The game was punctuated at intervals by commercial exhortations on behalf of “Yelram’s Tentacle Cream, for discriminating cephalopods”, “Snarvely’s canned phytoplankton guaranteed 100% zooplankton free!” or for “C’wopst Stix”—I never managed to figure out what they are or who they’re for. Those would have been inserted by Misterthoggosh’s company. There were also interruptions, a bit more frequent, caused by fighting players, during which the Proprietor’s guards made extremely loud clicking and whirring noises that I’m reasonably certain denoted enthusiasm.

  At last we were conducted onto a flagstoned verandah at the rear of the great house, entirely surrounded by a low retaining wall that also served as a planter. The western half of the enclosed space was a lush green lawn. To the south, beyond the waving fronds and shimmering leaves in the planters, lay about a hundred yards of coarsely cropped yellow salt grass, a broad, sandy beach—every grain of it imported; the natural shore is rocky—and finally the Inland Sea itself. For some reason, the Elders call it “Our Sea” and think it’s some kind of joke.

  Overhead, no fewer than a dozen flying machines, varying in design mostly by the species flying them, patrolled the airspace immediately above Misterthoggosh’s domicile. They were accompanied by several slower-moving, lower-flying but sharper-eyed and brilliantly-feathered members of some kind of airworthy reptilian that I’d only seen before as fossils. I wondered briefly whether the creatures were trained, remotely controlled somehow, or sapients in their own right. I meant to ask, but in all the excitement that was about to sweep over us, I forgot.

  There were plenty of vessels out on the water, too, long, low, carnivorous-looking splinters that didn’t resemble pleasure boats in any way at all. Doubtless they had companions, patrolling under the surface, as well. It was a literal case of defense-in-depth. I think in some universes, Misterthoggosh might easily have been his own country.

  The grounds themselves were enormous. Set in the center of the decorative sandstone flagging lay a saltwater swimming pool at least fifty paces on a side. I suspected its design included handy tunnels to the house and the sea where Misterthoggosh kept his other palatial estate.

  In the water, the old boy was present in the flesh—and there was plenty of that, sticking out of the end of his multicolored, knobbly, spiral shell. A highly assorted crowd of guests swam in the pool with him, or sat around on the patio surrounding it, or right at the pool’s edge, with their various pedal appendages dangling in the water. I don’t know why, but many sapients like to do that, including yours truly. Beyond the east end of the pool an outsized image field had been activated in which the great mollusc could be seen even better. Somebody bumped into me as he shoved his way past, without excusing himself. I was moderately surprised that the Magnificent Mollusc had decided to invite the mass media to his little garden party, in the form of the Planetary Implant Network, or PIN—the bottom-feeders who work for it, news floozies and gentlemen of the evening, are commonly called “pinheads”. It was one of them who had just trampled me.

  There are probably a thousand “news” networks like PIN, each one sleazier than all the others. I wondered why Misterthoggosh had chosen this particular bunch, who I’d always thought were among the lowest. I’ve been told it’s the same in every universe we’ve explored so far. The profession seems to attract the worst among any species. They and their enhanced cerebrocortical implants were all over the place, now, wearing what looked like rearview bicycle mirrors on headbands, so that the audience at home could see their precious faces as they blathered.

  Another of them, a female arthropod of some kind, approached me, pretty damned condescendingly, it struck me, soliciting my feelings (she didn’t appear to be interested in my thoughts) about what was happening here. I snarled and showed my fangs—impressive, if I say so myself; I practice in the mirror—and she left to bother somebody else.

  “Nice doggy,” my furry white ass.

  Off in one corner of the giant-sized backyard, a bevy or gaggle or coven of lovely young female specimens, a majo
rity of them quite human, a few of them pleasantly humanoid like Lornis, each and every one of them highly mammalian and agreeably clad in what looked like their underwear, were playing some kind of a game with a head-sized ball tossed back and forth over a net set at chin level. Wonderful scenery. Someone outside my peripheral vision said they were college students. I could easily have watched them bouncing around for hours. So could the other fifty or sixty males casting ocular organs in that direction.

  Eichra Oren extracted a big cigar from his tunic pocket and let it light itself. He inhaled and then exhaled with visible satisfaction. You’re not supposed to do that with cigars, but he was the boss, and they were his cigars, not to mention his lungs. I was content just to sit on the sun-warmed flags, prepared to enjoy whatever was about to happen.

  Although it didn’t come without a cost.

  Regrettably, as I knew it must, I heard a gong that stopped the ball-playing abruptly. Towels and hoodies and windbreakers were passed around to cover all that moist, gleaming flesh, and there followed a rapid migration from that corner of the Proprietor’s yard, toward the broad patio where Eichra Oren stood beside Lornis, her monkey-thing in her arms. As the formerly naked coeds approached, the expression on the young Denisovan’s face could be read as “Back off, girls, he’s mine!”.

  Or possibly, “One more step and you’re lunchmeat!”

  I’m never entirely certain what females want from Eichra Oren, or what they think they’re going to get. This bunch crowded around him, giggling and squealing. He was a moderately famous practitioner of a sometimes dangerous profession. I guess that made him “Adventure Man” to them. Intellectually, at least, I know there are females who like “life-takers”. I was pretty sure at least a couple were scanning his image into their implants from head to toe, planning to use his avatar in their virtual sex software. There’s no law against it, but it isn’t very polite. Lornis held onto the boss’s arm as if her life—or maybe his—depended on it. Whatever he said to them was kindly but reserved.