The getaway special

by Jerry Oltion

  "Allen and I have been discussing the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and the ramifications of Bell's inequality. Would you care to join us?"

  There was a moment of silence while she tried to bring her brain up to speed, but Allen burst into laughter before she could think of a response that wouldn't make her sound like an idiot.

  "Gotcha!" he said.

  "What?"

  "I just taught him to say that. He doesn't understand a word of it." She resisted the urge to hit him. Tippet might think she was going for him. So she just stuck out her tongue at them both and sat down beside Allen. The fern was cool and damp underneath her butt, and the rock was cold against her back; she immediately wished she had brought her sleeping bag to sit on, but she ignored her discomfort and said, "So what else have you taught him?"

  "Quite a bit, actually."

  Allen pointed at the walkie-talkie, and Tippet said, "Radio." He pointed at his right foot, and Tippet said, "Boot."

  "Right or left?" Allen asked.

  "Right."

  Then he pointed at the computer screen, and Tippet said, "Wheel." Judy leaned over to see what was on the screen, and sure enough, it was a picture of a bicycle. Allen's finger rested on the front wheel.

  "Where'd you get that?"

  "The screen saver. It's got a ton of image files." Allen clicked the mouse pointer on the "Demo" button and the bicycle started pedaling itself around the screen.

  "Roll," Tippet said.

  "Yes, that's right. He's got nouns down cold," Allen said. "He picks 'em up as quick as I can display

  'em. And he gets verbs almost as fast, once he realizes I'm interested in the action. I'm thinking of trying him on the alphabet and turning him loose with a dictionary."

  He didn't sound like he was kidding. "You're serious?"

  "Hey, it's worth a shot." Allen opened a text document and typed the word "Tree," then said it out loud: "Tree." He pointed at one for good measure.

  Tippet did his little victory dance on the back of Allen's hand. "Yes," he said. "Understand." Allen typed half a dozen other words, naming them as he did, then he pointed out the similar letters, sounding them out within the words. Tippet echoed the sounds, stumbling a little over long and short vowels, but it was clear that he was already familiar with the concept of writing. Judy left them at it and went off to pee and freshen up as best she could without water. She stopped beside one of the trees and reached out cautiously to touch it, half expecting it to shy away like a nervous horse, but it stood there like any other tree. She laid her palm against its bark and felt for a pulse. None. The branches bent when she pulled on them, and lifted back into place slowly rather than springing up like an Earthly tree branch, but that was the only major difference she could see between it and any other bushy-looking palm.

  She whacked the trunk with her hand, ready to leap away if that got a response, but it absorbed her blow with hardly a sound. A knife might get its attention, but she wasn't ready to try that yet. So she just hunkered down out of sight of Allen and Tippet and did her business, then went back to the Getaway and dug around in the grocery bag until she found a couple of apples and a can of beans. It was the most breakfast-like food they had brought with them unless she wanted to cook potatoes, which she didn't. Not without some water to clean up with afterward. She looked at the three remaining cans of beer, but left them where they were. The apples would have to be enough liquid for now. She took the food back outside and gave one of the apples to Allen, then opened the can with her Swiss army knife and stuck a spoon in the beans. Tippet learned the names for everything while they ate, and Allen spelled out the words for him.

  "We've got to go get some water today," Judy said.

  Allen nodded. "Yeah. Maybe we can carry the computer with us and keep up the language lesson while we do it."

  "Have you asked him about the trees?" she asked. "Is it safe to walk around in the forest?"

  "I tried, but we got hung up in the vocabulary. He doesn't seem to get it when I talk about them moving around."

  "Hmm. That's kind of strange. Maybe it's not all that common."

  "Or it's so common he doesn't get what I'm asking about. When I told him one of the trees was checking us out last night, maybe he was like, 'So?' "

  "Maybe. Well, we didn't get eaten yesterday, and we've got to get some water if we want to stick around, so I think we're going to have to risk it."

  "Yeah. Let's see if we can get that idea across to him." Allen switched the computer display to the screen saver again and searched through the image files until he found a picture of a stream. "Water," he said.

  "Water," Tippet echoed through the walkie-talkie.

  "Judy and Allen go water," Allen said.

  Tippet thought about that for a moment, then said, "Judy go water before dark." She blushed. He'd recorded it, too. "Not that kind of water," she said. "We need fresh water. To drink." She mimed scooping some up in the empty bean can and drinking from it. "New water."

  "What is new?"

  Oh boy. How could she get that across to him? She fished in her pocket for some coins, thinking she might have a shiny one and a worn one that she could use for comparison, but she didn't have a cent on her. She looked around her, thought about using rocks, but there were too many other interpretations. Apples? Sure! Allen hadn't eaten his yet—he was too busy playing with the computer—but she'd wolfed hers down in about six bites. She picked up the gnawed core that she'd set on ground beside her and said, "Old apple," then she picked up Allen's whole one and said, "New apple." Tippet said, "Maybe understand. Before dark is old day; this light is new day?" His voice over the radio even got the inflection right to make it a question.

  "Got it!" she said. "We go get new water."

  "Got it," Tippet echoed.

  They didn't have canteens or bottles or even Ziploc bags to carry it in. Judy climbed back inside the Getaway and dug through their equipment for anything that would work, but the best things she could come up with were the empty beer and bean cans. She and Allen would drink that much just walking back from the river.

  She eyed the white plastic bucket that housed the auxiliary hyperdrive engine. They had drilled holes in the lid for wires to pass through, but they had intentionally left the bucket intact just in case they needed it. And five gallons would be enough water for a couple of days, if they could just carry it back without killing themselves. That would be the trick.

  Unless . . . "Hey." She stood up and stuck her head out through the hatch. "Allen, ask him if there's any water closer than the river."

  He looked up from the computer. "Oh. Sure. Good idea. Tippet, where is the closest water?"

  "Closest?" Tippet asked.

  Allen answered by pointing at trees. "Far. Closer. Closest." He repeated it with pebbles to make sure it was clear he was talking about the concept of distance, and not something to do with trees.

  "Closest water?" Tippet asked. "Not understand."

  "We want to know where it is. Where closest water?" Allen pointed around in a wide arc. "Where closest water?"

  " Tppppt understand question. Not understand where closest water. You tell Tppppt." Judy frowned. "He lives here and he doesn't know where the creeks are? That seems odd." Allen said, "Maybe he doesn't drink water. Or maybe he doesn't live nearby. He could be from way out in the plains for all we know." He turned back to the butterfly. "Where do you live?"

  "Live?"

  "Where you go when the sun sets?"

  "You go water when sun set?"

  "Oh, bugger. Too many concepts at once. No, no. We go water now, but we don't know where water is."

  Tippet flexed his wings. "Don't is not? You not know?"

  "Got it. We're new here."

  "You . . . new?"

  "That's right. We just got here yesterday. We live on a planet that goes around another star." That was too much all at once. "Stop," said Tippet. "Slower. What is planet? What is star?" Judy laughed. "You got yourself i
nto it that time."

  But Allen did an amazing job of explaining elementary astronomy in just a few words. He waved his hands all around, touched the ground, then pointed at the sky, saying, "This, this, this, far, near, everything; this big, big, big rock is a planet. Understand? Trees, rocks, air, everything together is the planet."

  Tippet caught on fast. "Planet is skkkkp. Big rock, fly around sun."

  "Right! And the lights in the sky at night; those are stars."

  "Stars are suns far away."

  "That's right. Good, you know that already. We live on a planet that flies around another star." Tippet tilted all his wings toward the Getaway Special, its wooden framework and reinforcing cables giving it more the appearance of an outhouse on its side than an interstellar spacecraft. "I not understand as much as I think I do. You live there, yes?"

  "No, no. That's what brought us here. That's our spaceship. We climb inside, go from star to star very fast."

  Tippet mulled that over for a few seconds, then said, "No. Big far lot many no." 33

  The look on Allen's face was priceless. He'd invented hyperdrive, built a spaceship, and flown it to another star, but even the aliens weren't impressed. He stammered, "It's—it's true! We did!" but Tippet wasn't having any of it.

  "No go from star to star," the butterfly said. "Not in that." Judy laughed. She knew just how he felt. But there was an easy way to prove it, and it didn't even involve a demonstration. Not of the hyperdrive anyway. She merely reached down to her feet and extricated her helmet from the pile of stuff there, set it on the top of the tank between her hatch and Allen's, then tugged the rest of her spacesuit out as well. She had to climb out first and drag it through the hatch behind her, then lower it to the ground.

  Tippet was totally silent while she split open the waist ring, stepped into the legs, wriggled into the top, and rejoined the two pieces. She put the helmet over her head and locked it down as well, then stepped away from the Getaway and did a slow pirouette.

  She pulled off the helmet again. No sense in wasting oxygen. "This is my spacesuit," she said. Tippet had taken out his camera. He flew up and filmed her from all angles, then landed on her right shoulder and focused on the inside of her helmet as well. His walkie-talkie voice said simply, "Spacesuit."

  "Right. It holds air when I'm in space. Way up high above the sky, there's no air. We call that space. You understand space?"

  Tippet did a little dance. "Understand space? Understand space? Skkkkt ." He flew back to the computer on Allen s lap, set his camera down on the "H" key, and said,

  "Watch."

  Judy knelt down until her face was only a couple feet away. Allen was already that close. Tippet stood there on the keyboard for a few seconds, not moving a muscle, then just as Judy was about to say,

  "Well, what are we supposed to see?" he reached up with his forelegs and pulled off his head. Except he still had a head. It was a smaller one, wrinkled and dark like a raisin, and for a horrible moment Judy wondered if that was his brain, but then Tippet popped the smooth yellow bulb back over it and gave it a twist and the picture came clear.

  "He's wearing a spacesuit too," she whispered.

  "Son of a bitch," said Allen.

  Tippet's radio voice squawked and honked for a few seconds while his suit refilled with his own air, then he gave a very human-sounding snuffle and said, " Tppppt understand space. Tppppt live in space!

  Whole life in space, move slow from star to star."

  Judy looked at the tiny butterfly standing there all aquiver on the laptop computer keyboard. His whole body barely covered four keys. How could something that small be an interstellar astronaut, especially on a ship that actually traversed every kilometer between stars? The energy required to accelerate to a useful velocity and to decelerate when he reached his destination would be enormous. Of course the smaller the payload, the less energy it would take, but still. It would require controlled nuclear fusion at the very least, and probably total conversion of matter to energy to make it practical. The image of butterflies fooling around with those kind of elemental forces seemed ludicrous. But he was wearing a pressure suit, or at least an environment suit, and there would be no reason for that if he'd evolved here.

  "Well, that explains why he doesn't know where the watering holes are," Judy said. She was trying to decide whether this was good news or bad news. Finding intelligent aliens was one thing, but finding another spacefaring race opened up a whole different can of worms. For instance, if Tippet had come here slower than light, that implied a higher level of technology than humanity's. Earth had been at least a century away from being able to field a sublight interstellar vessel before Allen changed the rules. There was no need for that particular kind of ship now, but the technology behind it was still well beyond what humanity had. Maybe beyond what they would ever have, if Carl Reinhardt was right. But Tippet and his people had already done it.

  Suddenly he didn't seem so small and cute as he had before.

  "Where's your spaceship?" she asked.

  He was still recovering from his dose of air. "What is . . ." sniff ". . . spaceship?" Judy pointed at the corrugated yellow Getaway. "That. Spaceship is where you live while you move from star to star."

  Tippet took a few seconds to reply. Maybe he was parsing out what she'd said, or maybe he was just trying to convince himself that a yellow plastic tank could be a spaceship. At last he said, " Tppppt spaceship above sky. Go around planet in space. Understand?"

  "It's in orbit," Allen said. "Sure. Go around planet in space is orbit. How many more of you are up there? How many Tippets on spaceship?"

  Tippet said, "Lot many, but number not matter. Same Tppppt there. All one Tppppt."

  "Oh."

  Oh, indeed. Judy hadn't considered that possibility. She wondered how that worked, if it was some kind of clone-style gestalt where all the separate little Tippets added together to make one big organism, or if there was a queen who controlled all the little worker Tippets. She wanted to ask, but she didn't have the vocabulary for it.

  "We've got to learn how to communicate better," she said. "And unfortunately, we've got to go get water today, too."

  "Maybe not," Allen said. "How about your landing craft?" He held out his hand and made rocket noises while he brought it to the ground. "Landing craft. Conies down from spaceship. Where is your landing craft?"

  Tippet tilted all his wings to the left. "There. South. Lot fly south."

  "That's the same direction the river's in. Can you bring water here in your landing craft?" Again it took him a few seconds to answer. Judy had assumed he was just thinking when that happened, but now she wondered if he was receiving a translation from some supercomputer in orbit. Or instructions from the queen. "No," he said. "Landing craft only come down. Not fly again." Allen said, "Oh. Then how do you get back up to your ship?"

  "Not go back. Tppppt stay."

  "You're setting up a colony here?"

  "Not understand."

  "A colony. That's when you live here, build houses, have children, and . . . never mind. We'll talk about that later."

  "Not understand," Tippet said again. There was no change in his tone of voice, but something felt different than it had a minute ago. Maybe it was just the longer pause between responses, or maybe the change was in Judy's reaction to what he said. Learning just how technologically advanced he was had changed the picture for her considerably.

  "Learn more words," Tippet said. "Show me new words."

  "Right." The computers screen had timed out and gone blank; Allen reached around Tippet and tapped it on again. "Let's see if this thing's got a dictionary." Judy removed the spare hyperdrive from the five-gallon bucket, nestling its unprotected wad of circuitry into a hollow in her beanbag chair. She put a couple more apples and the cheese they hadn't eaten yesterday and a can of chicken noodle soup into her stuff sack, plus the spare walkie-talkie in case something happened to the first one. She stuck the portable camp stove and a cook p
ot in the sack, too, so they could boil the soup and any water they drank on the way home, and she put in all three remaining cans of beer in case they didn't make it to water. She was getting tired of carrying the pistol everywhere she went—it had to weigh a couple of pounds—but she remembered the tree running amok last night, so she tucked it in her waistband. Who knew what they might find today?

  She put the stuff sack in the bucket, climbed out of the Getaway and pulled the hatches closed behind her, then the three interstellar explorers set off for the river. The forest was just as they had seen it yesterday: frond-topped trees standing well apart, with the occasional bush interspersed among them and fern-grass blanketing the ground. There was no motion while they walked through, no sense that anything was even aware of their presence. If she hadn't seen a tree in motion last night, Judy would have sworn nothing had moved here for years. The place had a timeless, static feel to it, like a movie set on a soundstage. Even the sky seemed painted on, with only a couple of tiny clouds drifting over the mountains to the west.

  Judy navigated while Allen held the computer and scrolled the dictionary up the screen one definition at a time for Tippet, who stood on the spacebar and filmed it with his video camera, presumably relaying the image directly to the mothership overhead. Judy wondered if that was such a good idea—after all, words like "war" and "genocide" were in there along with all the others—but there didn't seem to be much choice. It was either turn him loose to learn at his own rate, or teach him a word at a time the way they'd been doing and watch their tongues around him forever after. She'd had enough experience trying to hide stuff from her parents to know how well that worked. At least Tippet wasn't reading an encyclopedia. Not yet. But at the rate he was plowing through the dictionary, he might very well graduate to an encyclopedia within the hour. Of course there was a difference between uploading the language and learning how to speak it, but in Tippet's case that wasn't as big a gulf as it would have been for Judy or Allen. He seemed to have a natural aptitude for language, or a translation program on line that could assemble the pieces of an alien tongue in seconds. He would pause in his filming every now and then and the walkie-talkie at Allen's waist would crackle to life with a question about verb tenses or parts of speech or grammar, and the questions grew more complex each time.