Trina was instantly prone. Her weapon had appeared from somewhere, and she was sighting in on the nearest Boff.
I dove onto her.
"Not now, Court," she said calmly. “I'm in the mood for killin'."
I pulled the cute little maser from her cute little hand. “Don't be silly. That's our ride."
Half an hour later Trina turned to me. “How did you know," she whispered suspiciously as we glided along in the back of the hoverbus, "that this would take us to Gastro?"
"Color-coding. The beige line runs east and west, across the entire continent."
She gave me a withering look.
"It was a fifty-fifty chance," I hastily explained. “And we were right. This one is going towards Gastro. Not away."
"Sometimes I'm amazed that you can cross a street."
"Hush. Or else I'll sauté you and serve you up with a side of béarnaise." I said this in a very low whisper, for there is perhaps no worse thing you can say to a creature that looks like an asparagus. And we were surrounded by creatures that looked like asparagus.
Of course, so did we. Otherwise those same Boffians would have fallen on us with the razor scythes they hid beneath their leaf-like sheaves. I'd seen Boffs fight - they were nasty and fast and ruthless and had absolutely no respect for the sanctity of non-Boff life. They had only a minor amount of respect for the sanctity of Boff life.
The few supplies I'd managed to salvage from the Blue Bean had proved invaluable - which was exactly why, from our small pile of gear, I'd selected them. They were intended only as back-up emergency devices, but this situation counted. Thanks to the paperback-sized morph-packs each of us carried, a tactile projection hologram converted our humanoid shapes into touchable, feelable aliens. Ned, through his tendrils in my brain, even gave me the gift of Boffian gab, which was a collection of squeaks, grunts, and rustles. Although Trina lacked it - apparently her brain had been deemed too valuable to risk with such an implant.
Stuff like that can make you wonder. She'd been a little bit nicer to me ever since she'd figured out that I'd figured that out. We could communicate with each other over a narrow-beam sound channel; Ned used sound suppressors to tailor and narrow the beam. Not perfect, but safer than standard com gear. Optical filters let us see each other's faces, set in the middle of our respective stalks.
A Boffian just ahead turned slowly and with great solemnity to regard us with all three of its small pale-yellow eyes. There were no pupils visible, since the whole bilious sphere served as a pupil.
"Greetings, brother of the Great Seed Pod," it intoned. “May your sheaves grow straight and firm!"
This, I realized, was a ritual greeting. I returned it appropriately, with Ned's grudging help. It felt odd; he used a combination of my own mouth and a hidden tiny speaker to put my thoughts into the local lingo. Snort, rustle, wheeze, belch.
"I am Orna," rustled the creature. “This is my forty-fifth journey to the Celebrated Swamp, and perhaps my last before I return to the Fertile Field From Which All Sprouts."
In an aside, Ned explained that Orna was so ancient that he was, essentially, on his last legs. All two thousand of them, none longer than two inches. They swarmed from beneath the bottom of the stalk like transplanted fingers. Even if you were used to aliens, it was: Gross.
Orna seemed to be waiting for something. He loomed high, the sheaves ringing his trunk rising and falling one after another, creating a ripple that rode up and down him.
"Names!" cried Ned. “He wants our names!"
"Tell him, then!" I subvocalized.
"Tell him what? We didn't prepare any! I was going to scan the local transmissions when we were in orbit, but we were never in orbit. Oh, this delay is a breach of etiquette! Oh!"
No names? Nothing prepared? Great Zot! But no problem - I was a Finger of the Fist. Thinking on my feet, whether two or two thousand of them, was my specialty. I spoke. The answer was obvious.
"Honored Orna, I am Aspara, and this is Gus."
Ned appeared and grimaced as he translated; our names were hardly changed at all, with only a slightly modified inflection, and were recognizably rocky chunks of sound in the waterfall of Boffian speech.
Orna froze. I felt like a clod of fertilizer in the gaze of a hungry predatory vegetable. As is the way of clods of fertilizer, I froze. Orna seemed to reach some decision, and finally scraped, "Your first visit to the Great Wetness?"
"Yes," I crackled.
"An important rite of passage; now you have achieved Sprouthood and may be privy to all of the Boffian way. I trust you enjoyed your visit," shivered Orna.
"Deliciously damp," I clicked.
Trina apparently had been waging a battle to restrain herself, a battle she abruptly lost. The link hummed to life. “Aspara? And Gus? What kind of names are those? Why not just Idiot and Moron? Or Dead and Meat? Are you trying to get us killed? Do you want to end up in a shallow grave here on Boff?"
"Don't worry," I whispered into the link. “There are no shallow graves here. Everyone is buried in a nice deep swamp."
Orna said nothing; I again had the distinct sense that he was regarding me strangely. My response about the Great Wetness must have been inadequate. And, of course, Trina had been distracting me.
"Supremely soggy," I tried. “Fabulously flooded. Wonderfully wet. Almost too sopping, if such a thing is even possible." I began to feel inspired; I had an urge to wax poetic about the virtues of bogginess, the sublime serenity of the sopping, maybe even toss off a haiku or two, but Trina shot an alarmed look at me and I quit.
Orna now was definitely staring at me. “The Great Bog truly affects us all," he finally said, apparently deciding that I was drunk on the vision. “Some more than others. Tell me. Of what clan are you?"
Boffs were divided into a dozen or so clans, each identified by some characteristic attribute. “Spotted-Stalk," I said. Although, to my eyes our stalks were no more spotted than any other. Somehow, it seemed, Boff eyes worked differently. We hoped.
Orna seemed to accept that. “We are almost related, then. I am of Neatly-Arrayed-Leaves."
That sounded like it called for a ritual response, but Ned was silent. I cursed him under my breath. Orna waited. Yes, plainly some response was called for. I took the plunge.
"How nice," I offered.
Orna actually seemed to flinch. “The Great Bog," he said after a long period of uncomfortable scrutiny, "has its own swampy ways.
"You do want to get us killed!" Trina hissed over the link. It was risky but I guess she just couldn't resist. I ignored her.
"I haven't been quite myself since the Bog," I admitted to Orna. That was completely true - I'd been a Boff ever since the bog. It gladdened my heart to be so honest.
"Quite so," Orna agreed. “I suppose you are not the first. Oh my!" He suddenly shivered, and with a wet glopping sound deposited a pile of runny yellow gourds onto the floor. They quivered and steamed and jiggled like nightmare jello.
"By All that is Damp and Clammy," Orna said sadly. “A mess! My defecatory organs have malfunctioned!"
I felt a surge of revulsion as I realized what these steaming melons were. I wanted to back away. I wanted to run. To flee. To hide.
Instead, and to my everlasting horror, I heard myself say, "I would be honored to clean your mess. I have yet to honor my annual obligation to the public sanitation."
What? What? Not possible! Then I realized that I didn't say it. Ned said it for me. Great Zot! A masterful dirty trick! I imagined taking a laser drill in hand, aiming the violet beam at my temple, and excavating away until a tiny troll leapt from my head, fully formed, and ran away screaming and smoking, before vanishing in a bright flare as I lasered him. I knew Ned would see my whole little morality - and mortality - play.
"Oh stop that and relax," Ned whispered to me. There was no need for him to whisper in such situations - he didn't produce any actual sound when talking to me, but dumped his output directly into my brain's auditory center. N
evertheless, whisper he did - for the effect, I think - as he continued. “Fealty is an important concept in Boff culture. You are a relatively junior member. You are expected to help your elders. This is a perfect opportunity to blend in. You can't blame me for taking it. You should be thanking me. Such an ingrate." His tone took on a hint of a sulk.
"Wait a minute," I said under my breath. “I'm a junior member? Who thought of that? Shouldn't I be a senior, established, high mucky-muck? Major Green, perhaps?"
Orna shifted, crinkling his leathery stalk, and gazed dolefully at his steaming dung heap. It was hard to say if it was yellowish-green, or greenish-yellow. It was easy to say if it mattered: it didn't.
"Good point," Ned agreed. “Maybe we can modify the morph-pack projections later; but underlings are more anonymous, in general. For now," and he gestured grandly at the steaming pile of asparagus guano, "duty calls. It would be a great insult for you to retreat, having made the offer."
Orna was waiting expectantly, slightly perturbed at the delay. No doubt he would lay it at the many gnarled feet of the oh-so-impressive Great Bog.
"You win, Ned," I muttered silently.
"I know."
I gritted my teeth and did my duty. It wasn't as bad as I expected - it was worse. The substance was like loose clay, and I corralled it into disposal slots built into the floor of the hoverbus. My fall from grace was now complete - I had sunk to the level of janitor to one of the most vile, disgusting species known.
Finally I was back in what passed for my seat. From inside her aspara-suit Trina was staring at me in horror.
"Don't ever," she whispered, "tell me what you were just doing."
"Deal," I agreed, trying to ignore a reek that rivaled putrefied abalone. The overpowering stench was apparently of as little notice to the others as was my entire ordeal - in fact, time and again, other elderly Boffs dropped steaming yellow piles, and each time, a younger subservient like me cleaned up.
I tried to ignore this grim cycle and looked outside. The scene was alien rural, Norman Rockwell on a mindbend trip. A very bad mindbend trip. Round green houses were scattered about, each surrounded by a low bristly hedges that penned in five-legged creatures, something like the evil progeny of a forced mating between Bambi and an artichoke. Odd and faintly disturbing, for reasons hard to identify. I waited with faint trepidation for the scene to pass, to see what Boff would show me next.
It showed me more round green houses, more low bristly hedges, more five-legged Bambi-chokes. More. And still more. I looked around carefully, wondering if we were circling. Hoping we were circling.
We weren't. The scene was simply repeating itself, over and over, and over again. It was an awful rhythm that jangled my brain and assaulted my eyes. Finally they mercifully glazed and I lapsed into something of a stupor.
"Good news," Ned announced, some time later. He stood before me, a buxom blond wearing a slinky red dress and spike heels. Very disconcerting. That, of course, was why he was doing it. “I've been eavesdropping."
He could do that, I reminded myself. He had free access to my ears.
Ned waited until I finished my internal dialogue, which was his subtle way of reminding me that he knew I was having one. He smirked and continued. “By doing that clean-up gig, we've established a relationship of podness with Orna."
I stared at Ned as coolly as you can stare at a creature with no existence.
"You mean . . . We're podners?"
"Er, sort of, Tex."
"Help me out here. That's a good thing, right?"
"Of course! He'll look out for us. Something like a mentor. It's a Boffian custom for those new to Sprouthood."
"Like us."
"Like us," Ned agreed.
I went back to my thousand-parsec stare. Ned stomped off to the front of the bus, sat on the lap of a grizzled, ancient Boff, and slowly morphed into a large frondy fern.
Much later, the hoverbus lurched. I didn't realize it had stopped until all the Boffs rose and began to shuffle off. End of the line? Time Oscillator ho? No, Gastro was supposedly a recognizable city and we were still quite plainly in the local version of the sticks. More huts and hedges and beasts, oh my.
Orna, who had started down the aisle, glanced back at us and stopped. “Ah, still addled by the wonders of the Great Bog," he hummed. “So too was I, my first time. But come, Young Shoots. It is the Day Of All, and we have arrived at The Festival."
"Of course," I said uncertainly, and we rose to follow him off the hoverbus. Outside were clustered thousands of brethren vegetables, so many it seemed they'd sprouted from the very soil.
Orna chatted on blithely as he shuffled on his two thousand tiny legs and we imitated that hovering shuffle. You do it by bending your knees slightly and creeping ahead verrrrry sloooowwwly. Perfectly level, no up and no down. For a bipedal primate, a perfectly agonizing form of locomotion. As Trina and I subjected ourselves to the slow motion torture of faux Boff walking, Orna unintentionally - or perhaps intentionally, given my plainly idiotic state, from the Boffian point of view - gave us a lecture on the Day Of All.
It was the festival at the core of the present Boff philosophy. The present philosophy, because it changes from time to time. But the Day Of All commemorated and celebrated the essential equality of all Boffs before the Great Harvester who awaits each sprout at the end of the season of life. All were equal, all identical in the eyes of the great Harvester, all exactly the same. Boff was a smooth, uniform pudding, not a lumpy stew of different parts.
"How interesting, O Orna," I lied enthusiastically. I decided to see what else I could fish out.
"Unfortunately my feeble powers now seem unable to grasp such concepts. For to the humble tangle of cells I call my brain, it seems that not everyone is the same. Some are a little taller, some a little shorter."
He looked at me with pity. "Of course. But we adjust for that. For example, in athletic contests neither the strong nor the tall are allowed an advantage. There are different goals for each size and level of athletic ability. Under this marvelous system, the merest stripling has every chance of defeating even Drood-za, the greatest Rot-wa player of all. As it should be. Everyone must be equal. It is simply not fair for some to be superior."
Orna guided us around a corner and onto a wider path, filled with a crowd of green stalks.
"But what about those with naturally superior intellects?" I was hoping that if I kept the conversation going, eventually I could steer it towards some area that would help us - it couldn't hurt to gather as much background information as possible. For example, we didn't even know exactly where the Time Oscillator was. Not that I saw any way this would help find it.
"A slightly different approach, of course. It is a simple matter to identify them at an early age and ensure that an appropriate proportion of them are channeled into jobs which, although admittedly not taxing to their powers, nevertheless assure the Harmony Of The Whole. Meanwhile, a proportionate number of those with lesser, even deficient, mental skills are channeled to become leaders, professors, and great scientists.
"Please remind me, oh Orna. My mind is still fuzzy. Who decides all this?"
"You silly young Boff! The Great Pod Leader, with the help of the Master Vegeputer. At maturity, every individual is measured both physically and mentally, and assigned to particular groups. That is the key: all individuals are rightly perceived as members of groups. And all groups must be fairly represented in all things. The Vegeputer assures that the proportionate number of, to take you for an example, rather dim-witted Spotted-Stalks are able to overcome their natural deficits by being given high-placed positions. Ah, we are almost there. Come. It is time."
Orna led us to the end of an orderly line of Boffs standing in long before a platform which was open to the brown sky. I glanced left and right. It looked exactly like a vegetable patch and I had an almost irresistible urge for a power mower or a laser tiller. Even an old-fashioned hoe. Not surprisingly there was nothing of the sort
handy.
I mulled over Orna's words as the Boffs took their places. We knew so little about this species that one would think every bit of information would somehow be useful. But I apparently had mined an entirely useless vein of sociological ore. There was absolutely no way that Orna's drivel was of any help.
A hush fell across the assembly and I sensed that The Festival was about to begin. What alien pagan rituals awaited us? Torture? Sacrifice? Gratuitous violence or nudity? I hoped so. The hush deepened as a lone Boff ascended the stage and moved to its center, then turned outward to face the crowd.
Killu, his name was. The planet Boff may have a long tradition of powerful oratory; the planet Boff may have a legendary pantheon of compelling, moving speakers, of fabled rhetorical power. If so, Killu would not be among them.
"Honored Proportionals, welcome to the Festival Of The Day of All!" he began in a dull and scraping monotone. “I am only one of many speakers, at the many Festivals on this Majestic Day. Each Speaker has of course been selected by the Master VegePuter on the basis of Statistical Proportionality and not individual merit. I am therefore the personified Essence of Proportionality!"
"Ahh-HO," exclaimed all the Boffs at once, making me jump. Ned explained that this meant, roughly, "Amen."
The Speaker dove into a long and frighteningly dull discourse on the merits of Statistical Proportionality. He outlined the positive effects on Boff society – mathematically precise equality, evenness, fertilizer in every plot, and so on, and even gave us some history. Statistical Proportionality had ended the rule of the Stalkists, who had maintained the now-despised philosophy of Stalkism. Now all had an equal chance, regardless of their clan or the decorations upon their stalks or their abilities. The Master VegePuter assessed all upon sprouthood, and assigned them to tasks that ensured the Statistical Proportionality of the masses. A lack of individual freedom was a small price, and gladly paid, for the utter equality it bought. No other species was so even! So smoothly distributed! So . . . Bog-like!
"Ahh-HO!"
The Blue Marble Gambit Page 10
