THE BLUE MARBLE GAMBIT
By
Jupiter Boson
CHAPTER 1. HEADGAME
“Monkey," hissed a green-cabled serving robot, “food!”
Three metal arms shot a silver platter through blue air. With machine perfection it crash landed in front of me.
The robot ran away on silver legs.
The platter steamed.
I tapped the smoking lid.
Heavy. Armored, even. That was ominous anywhere, but in a seedy CasinoPlex somewhere on the curdled side of the Milky Way, in the company of three aliens from hostile species who had insisted on buying dinner, it made me as a suspicious as a Trojan receiving a second wooden horse.
"What is it?" I asked the alien on my right, a large crustaceanoid sheathed in an ochre carapace and dangling a giant fighting claw. An acrid stench filled my nose.
"A rare delicacy, just for you," the Mainer replied through his translator box. Somewhere on distant Earth, I hoped, his cousins were being lowered into boiling water. Mainers were living proof of the general rule that bad aliens looked like good food.
"We spent much time picking it," confided the Orlyx. Acting as dealer, he sat across from me, a jumble of midnight-blue spider parts topped by three aqua heads bobbing on snaky pink necks.
"Oh I hope it's the right thing," murmured the gelatinous blob on my left. Known as a Meba, he had a knack for straight flushes, as evidenced both by the large pile of glimmering holochips stacked before him, and a russet smear on his port quarter shaped like South America.
“Think of it as an interspecies gesture. Proceed, so we may return to the game."
The game. Holopoker. It was a constant in the seedy, ammonia-tinged metal cavern that made up the Round-N-Round Orbital CasinoPlex, an establishment already decrepit when Earth's Pyramids were new.
I had been on the way the leisure world of Eros for a long-overdue leave when despite the stern prohibitions of a small pile of human laws, codes, and regulations, two of which mentioned me by name, I gave in to the weak gravity of the CasinoPlex, dropped in, and found myself once again playing poker with aliens. But with the appearance of the armored but dented platter this particular game had taken a new twist.
Three sets of eyes were on me as I whipped off the blastproof cover.
Then four sets of eyes were on me.
The fourth was lying on my plate. Purple, wide open, and fixed. But only for a moment. Then with a glittering flash the thing snarled and leapt for my throat, fangs slavering, which is something few fangs actually do.
Years of training snapped into play. First, I screamed. Once this was out of the way I used the utensils - the fork and knife were fairly effective, the spoon useless - to fight back. The killbot's razorclaws nicked at my wrist as I plunged a fork into an armored scale. One tine snapped off and the rest skidded into the gravtable's surface, adding another rip to the green felt.
The killbot fired a jet of acid. I dodged and the yellow arc streaked over my shoulder and through the blue-tinged air before gouging a steaming crater in the metal deck. A centipede-like repairbot began to snake over.
"Deft, for a human," noted the Mainer, now exuding the sharp odor of crustacean displeasure. Tiny circular saw blades extended from the killbot's mouth and slime flew as they reached for me. I stabbed my fork into the mechanism, breaking off another tine but jamming the whirling knives. Two tines left.
"Perhaps we should have used the poison," observed the Meba, as plates of chitin armor shuttled across his rippling surface like drunken icebergs.
A fire plume burst from the beast and I feinted back, forth, and forth again. Tiny poison flechettes zinged past before I found a seam in the armored scales and dug in, seeking the power conduit. What was left of my fork held the mechanical assassin down as I sawed like a game show contestant trying to eat a shoe, glad that I hadn't been using chopsticks. With a final thrust I cut through and the killbot crackled to a halt, a tiny missile port winking open and then closed, no power to launch.
The three aliens at my table rattled forward, proving the old adage that it's hard to move quietly when you're wearing your skeleton on the outside.
"How disappointing," said the Mainer, claw clacking in dismay. My face stung from tiny bits of chitin spattering from the serrated edges.
"Pesky," sighed one Orlyx head.
"Monkey," finished another.
"Poison! Poison, I said! But no. You Orlyxs always have to be so dramatic," carped the Meba, suddenly mottled with a violet flush of dismay.
"No matter," intoned the Mainer, shifting in a way that demonstrated just how huge he was. Three meters tall, three hundred kilos, and eight feet, in the sense of walking, not old-style measuring. “We'll do it the old-fashioned way. Court diz Astor, as authorized by the Galactic Code, we are here for your head."
I'd figured this was coming; although the Galaxy was a rough place and humans were held in low regard, the serving of lethal meals stretched even the usual envelope of hostility. It was a scant few centuries since our first visit to the Moon, and the rest of the Galactic party had been rolling for longer than mankind had been a species. As newcomers to the Galactic scene humans were widely resented and ridiculed. Hardly better than protozoa, according to most. Bacteria with thumbs, according to others. At least some of this arose from the perception that we hairless chimps had appropriated - well, misappropriated was how they thought of it - Earth's sentiency slot, which rightly belonged to more Galactically palatable critters such as offshoots of ants or bees or roaches. What had been on Earth a long but temporary prehistoric age of unpleasantly-huge creepy crawlies was still going strong on other worlds. Nature loves a bug, as the saying goes. Thank Zot for asteroid impacts and boots - as another saying, popular only on Earth, goes.
But since no handy asteroid with mayhem on its mind was likely to appear here, I was on my own. The lone exit to the CasinoPlex was blocked and there was no way I could battle all three massive aliens, who were not only better armed, but better legged, better tentacled, and better mandibled. So much for flight or fight. Which left humanity's third and most often-used option, a perpetual favorite of politicians.
"This must be a mistake," I lied, while sliding forward a holochip to raise the bet in the almost-forgotten game. “I am not this . . . who? Quark? Quark dill-"
"Court diz Astor!" spat the Mainer, his razor mandibles crushing the consonants and eviscerating the vowels. His compound eyes somehow managed to bulge.
"That's the chap," I agreed, pausing thoughtfully before dropping a single card in the vac chute and drawing another from the Orlyx. What a surprise. It was even worse than those I held. I raised my two eyes, simple binocular vision, no stalks or compound lenses. I knew I looked pathetic to these advanced aliens, from their ancient and oh-so-evolved races.
“Who is he?" I asked curiously.
"diz Astor. Court diz Astor. You are Court diz Astor," tittered the Orlyx's middle head.
"Come again?"
One of the Orlyx's three beaked heads retracted then bobbed upward like an unchained buoy to stare at a tiny golden claw which held a tinier ochre viewscreen.
"What we know of Court diz Astor will surprise you. Court diz Astor was once a space pirate, the first among his kind. While still a mere hatchling he raided human ships, always alone, and never killing."
"Never killing them," interrupted the Mainer, maroon head-fringes quivering. "He is not so respectful of his Galactic betters!"
"I am getting to that," agreed the Orlyx. “Court diz Astor left piracy to join what is known to the monkeys as - the Fist. He gave up committing crimes against humanity to commit crimes for humanity. And against the Galaxy."
I took on a look of ex
aggerated outrage. “The Fist! The Fist is a human myth! Ha ha!" I laughed at the notion of anyone believing in that supposedly secret and officially disavowed organization, which was nevertheless the subject of books, vids, and gossip. Run by a rather evil Uncle of mine, it took its name from the fact that despite a stomach-churning plethora of pincers, mouth-spines, tentacles, and psuedopods, precious few alien species had anything quite like a hand or, more specifically, a fist. And from the Fist's primary purpose: whenever necessary, possible, or profitable, to pummel aliens. All for the benefit of Mother Earth. But the Fist's reliance on criminals, and the identities of those stalwart guardians of the Blue Marble, were its most closely guarded secrets.
"The Fist is real enough," the Mainer clattered.
"But being a member could hardly be a crime!" I suggested.
The Meba swelled globularly. “Court diz Astor has robbed. And stolen. And cheated. And killed. He has violated innumerable sections of the Galactic Code."
An overly restrictive body of regulations, I noted silently.
The Mainer cut in, its breath foul with alien brine, a mix of old cheese, older pickles, and the inside of a dog. "An InterGalactic pest. A stellar scourge. His head is wanted on six worlds."
The number was closer to nine but this didn't seem the place for a correction.
The skin atop each of the Orlyx's heads wrinkled in a sign of speculative interest. “He has been uncommonly effective, considering his many handicaps."
"Handicaps?"
"A paltry two legs and two arms - no pincers or mandibles at all."
Around me a sea of pincers and mandibles and cilia and feelers waved, as if each owner was reassuring themselves that they were not doomed to a horribly naked existence without such basics.
"This must be a mistake," I said easily. “I'm not Court diz Astor. I'm . . ., uh . . . Erran T. Scansion! Wandering Poet and Space Minstrel!"
"Unlikely," pointed out the Mainer.
"Extremely," concurred the Orlyx, but then his center head did a passable double-take. “But out of curiosity, what form of poetry do you practice?"
"Er, haiku," I replied, and for good reason. Anyone could trot out a haiku. In fact, bad haiku is almost an oxymoronic term - the worse a haiku is, the better it is. Show me a bad haiku and I'll show you a great haiku.
"Then share with us, O poet," intoned the Orlyx heads in three-part disharmony as an unsavory ripple washed up and down the pale-orange cilia that adorned its cloven thorax.
"Easy enough. Several come to mind. How about:
Court diz Astor is
a name for trouble and pain
just you look at it.
Damp ocular pits moistened. Compound eyes glittered. Wobbly eyestalks twisted. Hardly a standing ovation, although my audience had plenty of legs. But I was undeterred.
"OK. How about:
Universe of bugs
Far too many legs and limbs
Oh for a big shoe.”
Now gleaming viewtubes bent, bump-covered vid tasters thrust, and sonic imagers thrummed until my eyeballs ached. Finally the Orlyx fixed the gaze of two heads on me while the third looked away and spoke.
"Those are rather bad haiku."
"Exactly," I nodded, not sure which head to address but settling for a spot somewhere between the left two. “They are a new art form: Bad Haiku. Quite avant-garde. The cutting-edge of poetry. The essence of the ultra-modern. You have very discerning auditory organs."
There was the ripping-paper sound of either alien laughter or alien derision. It could have been both.
"We will add bad poetry to your list of offenses, Court diz Astor."
"What?" I tried to sound shocked.
"We neglected to mention that there is one other thing," rattled the Mainer, "which proves your identity."
“My devastating good looks? Always causing trouble, those.”
"Your DNA," crunched the Orlyx, placing a thumb-sized remote scanner on the shimmering surface of the table. “We have only a partial sample from Court diz Astor; most of the blood was plasmalated by the energy bolt that nicked him." I could still feel the sting on my shoulder. “But what we have . . . matches you."
I glared at that tiny device and its intrusive, multi-wavelength optics, coursing up and down the hidden ladders of my genetic material, peeking under my ribosomes, gazing into my cellular nuclei. Some things should be kept private.
The aliens crackled forward. “It is such a pleasure to meet you, diz Astor. Your head appears pleasantly portable."
The situation reminded me of an interesting Galactic parallel, one that suggested either a fantastic misunderstanding of evolution, or a vast and wholly unappreciated cosmic sense of humor. For throughout the Galaxy, the more an alien looked like human food, the nastier the alien. This theory dictated that Mainers were bad news, and so they were. Orlyxes and Mebas didn't look as much like food, although the Meba resembled a very bad stew, but they looked bad enough.
"Well," I shrugged, "you could just take my head."
The Mainer closed in to do just that. The Mainer was the muscle - at this particular larval stage they roamed the Galaxy, as assassins and mercenaries and killers. The Orlyx would be the brain - three of them, in fact, linked by a network of quantum tubes that served as nerve fibers. The Meba I was less sure about; he clarified the issue by extruding a pair of wet and slimy pincers and slithering forward while flushing a bright, enthusiastic pink.
"Or?" prompted the Orlyx.
I slid a thick holochip across the table, again raising the bet. This time a tiny, anatomically-correct image glowed over the chip.
"Or . . . You could play me for it."
A short pause while strange impulses ricocheted through the dark tangles of three bobbing brains.
"Game," he replied.
"But-" said the Mainer, still in-bound, several small antennae on his upper carapace waggling furiously.
"Sit!" commanded the Orlyx. The Mainer froze, antennae and all, as did the Meba. I held my breath, even though it was laced with a whiff of putrid brine.
"Sit!" repeated the Orlyx, emphasizing with some very elaborate motions of its cilia.
The aliens snapped, crackled and popped into their seats.
The Orlyx kept one head turned on each of its alien companions, while the middle orb turned slowly to me. “Now. We play!"
The game was a form of holopoker, played with a deck of 111 shape-shifting cards and a set of rules more complex than medieval Japanese court etiquette, all of which create certain chess-like qualities. The game has tides of battle and even a little fog of war. And certain breeds of aliens loved to gamble. It was my luck - whether good or bad remained to be seen - that this particular kill team included as its leader one of these.
"But I want his head now," grumbled the Mainer, his claw clacking like a mouth watering.
"Soon enough, my red-shelled friend. A little sport, first," soothed the Orlyx. At this larval stage, Mainers busily worked to telescope a millennium of violence and aggression into a single short century, at the end of which they would return to their home planet and metamorphosis into benthic, sessile, plant-like underwater critters, merrily filter-feeding while lying to each other about their larval exploits.
The Orlyx began to deal, spiky limbs blurring out spatters of shiny cards that glimmered in neat piles before each of us.
As agreed I slid a thick glimmering holochip to the center of the table. It bore an image of my face, craggy, scarred, and topped by short orange hair, and now literally on the table. My face gazed back, in palpable disappointment. Have fun on your own, I imagined it hissing at me. Ichabod.
Of course they had to gamble too. The Mainer used a miniature crimson pincer of unsettling delicacy to slide forward a glowing holochip adorned with an ice-blue mouth tentacle. The Orlyx put in a frost-colored pusher spike. The Meba wagered a nicely-turned quasi-pod of an ebony hue.
"Hang on, here," I said, smiling my best alien-insulting smile. “The
bet is one head. Not these other, ah, pieces."
"The bet," corrected the Orlyx, "is one human head."
I nodded, demonstrating the mobility of the bet.
The Orlyx pulled a tiny sliver of material from somewhere and set it on the table. It blossomed into a huge musty yellow-paged hidebound book whose mass threatened for a moment to capsize the gravtable, until the ancient and balky repulsors compensated.
Galactic Book Of Corporeal Equivalents read the title, in all seventeen Galactically-approved languages, several of which I could decipher. The Orlyx used ebony spikes to nimbly flip the pages, which were faintly translucent and layered with multiple layers of microscopically-fine holoprint.
"Feeling impatient," the Mainer muttered in a low rattle, and began to snap his fighting claw. It sounded like bones breaking.
After a long search the starboard Orlyx head raised to fix its three shimmering black eyes on me. “As we thought, you simple live-borne spawn, according to the Galactic Book the parts corresponding to a primate skull are those we have wagered."
Species-ism was again rearing its ugly, so to speak, head.
"Don't close the book," I said, and tossed into the pot my heart and liver, both accurately depicted by small glowing images. The holo heart was actually beating, which nicely illustrated the point that sometimes too much cleverness is . . . too much. The aliens again consulted the Galactic Book, grumbled and chittered, and finally put in their heads, and so the stakes were sort of even, except for the three-headed Orlyx, for whom the loss of a head was but a minor social inconvenience, a petty faux pas, a temporary embarrassment.
The Orlyx was obviously cheating. Good.
The aliens complained as I slid another fat holochip forward. This one held a tiny image of my right arm. Then I added another, bearing my left. There were more annoyed consultations of the Galactic Book, and the aliens put in more holochips. I raised again. They came up with pincers, eyestalks, ocular pits, mandibles, antennae, and more. The miniaturized dismembered bodies that made up the pot looked like the aftermath of some awful interspecies space wreck.
The Blue Marble Gambit Page 1
