Encouraged, he continued with renewed enthusiasm, which manifested itself in his dull dry tone and clunky phrases. No other species, he dully announced, could match the Boffs in intra-species equality. Someday all would emulate Boff! After decades of warfare, strife, and sap-shed, Statistical Proportionality had ushered in a new age of peace. Progress had also tapered off, but this was a tiny and irrelevant price. After years of effort, the final goal was in reach - soon, a perfectly proportional society might be achieved, emerging whole like a ripe vegetable from the ground. Of course, it would be a constant battle to maintain it, but so be it. The goal was worth the struggle.
"Ahh-HO!" encouraged the crowd. The Speaker continued.
This Statistical Proportionality of the Boffs seemed very odd to me - not that I cared, as far as I was concerned these Boffs were free to paint themselves orange, hang from trees, and call themselves fruit - but it was the exact opposite of my own life in its complete sacrifice of all individuality. The Master VegePuter categorized and pigeon-holed every single one of them, then funneled them into appropriate places so some giant musty statistical ledger would balance. Well, whatever put the green in their leaves.
The Speaker continued unabated for a painfully long time. He had a politician's gift for saying nothing, over and over and over. It went on and on, and on, and then on some more. Ad nauseam, through nauseam, and finally well beyond nauseam. I began to fantasize about throwing off my morphsuit and running down the aisles screaming, letting the snicking razor-scythes end my agony.
Finally, suddenly, it ended. The Boffs finished with a final enthusiastic Ahh-HO! and then rose and began to shuffle off.
My legs were almost too stiff to manage the Boff creep.
"What now, honored Orna?" I asked our self-appointed guide.
"What now?" He seemed stunned by the question, although I suspect he was getting used to being stunned by my questions. “Now we get drunk!" he said.
CHAPTER 10. BREWHAHA
Getting drunk, Boff style, consisted of soaking one's lower half in huge tubs of a vile, yellow-green fluid. It apparently diffused through the cell walls and then coursed through whatever hell-spawned vascular systems these Boffs had. Straight to the sap-stream.
Trina and I were a little concerned. Was it acid? Poison? Were we in any danger of, say, melting?
Nope. It turned out be a sludge of Boffian mud and odd vegetable matter, which gave it that attractive color and seductively fecal-style lumpy texture. The active ingredient was, of all things, a heavy dose of plain old Altarian Sip - which of course has almost the exact composition of that centuries-old Earth favorite, Coca Cola. When this startling coincidence was first discovered on Earth it caused quite a shock. That initial shock was followed by a second, larger jolt. For of course there was no coincidence at all. Coca Cola, not mathematics or language or metallurgy, was the one legitimate "gift of the gods," the sole artifact of interstellar culture bequeathed to humanity by some passing alien philanthropists. Not medicines or star drives or the secrets of universal peace. Cola.
The universe was that kind of place.
There were a variety of vats, with different colors, concentrations, and presumably flavors. Bundles of Boffs soaked and twittered as they sampled each, and we imitated them.
"What," Trina muttered to me urgently, as we shuffled along, "are we doing?"
"Making the best of it?" At first I'd been intrigued by the concept of some good Boffian ale - until, that is, I found out that it was a kiddie drink, and we didn't get to drink it. I was a slave to my biology, to the intestinal nature of my imbibing. I was elementally alimentary.
"But our mission-"
"No talking now - just fit in and don't attract attention."
She crunched forward - the nod of a human in a Boff aspara-suit.
We wandered among the luminous vats, through swirls of eager Boffs. In order to blend - a painful word for a vegetable - in, we finally chose an outlying, unpopular pool and waded in. It was almost exactly like wading into a warm, sticky soup, which of course it almost exactly was.
We rose and trundled to another, darker-colored vat. Into this one we plunged, and then several more, as all around us the Boffs got drunk and drunker, which was followed closely by silly and sillier.
Nearby, two Boffs traded small slimy packets filled with yellow powder. They saw us watching and huffed away, offended.
What in Zot? I wondered.
"You just witnessed," Ned answered, "high Boff passion. A carnal act."
“Sex?”
"Close. Pollination."
So much for sampling that local pleasure. Trina and I shared a moment of silent thanks for our biology and continued our tour, trying to imitate the fumblings of hammered vegetables, pardon the image.
Apparently we didn't imitate too well. Soon we were attracting attention for our resistance to Boffian ale.
"Here, come here," one young fellow said, taking me by the stalk. “Dip," he said, ushering me generously to a place in an especially putrid vat. This was, I surmised, the local equivalent to buying someone a drink.
I settled into the vat. The Boffian way was to ease in very slowly, millimeter by millimeter, but I was tired of this approach. It seemed wimpy. I dropped in, knee-deep.
A whisper of awe from the crowd. I paused, as if sampling the brew through a million quivering stomata. I tottered, as if it was affecting me. I shivered, as if fighting for control. Then I gathered myself - a hard thing to do as a Boff - as if about to go deeper, and the crowd tensed and fell silent. I waited, building the tension, relying on a universal Galactic constant: Drinkers respect anyone who can drink more.
I plunged in chest-deep. A lusty roar of approval. I was led to another vat, where I plunged in again, and then to another, which I conquered the same way. By now I had attracted a crowd of worshipers. And oddly enough, I began feeling pretty good about myself. I was the alpha-dog of this pack. I could soak in sweetened soup all day long, none the worse for wear. I could go neck-deep.
I did.
Drunken shouts and cheers. I was a star. A legend in the making. The sapped Boffs were trying to out-do each other with toasts to my prowess.
“To an ironclad meristem!"
"To one tough stalk!"
"To the steel-stomataed one!"
I basked in the praise. Heck, I could swim under this stuff. Maybe I should drink a shot or two, just to impress them. Never mind that they lacked mouths. I could even -
Trina, I noticed, had an odd red spot in the center of her trunk. I instantly calmed. By Mars' dusty red arse no, not a morph-pack malfunction here. Surrounded by the enemy. That's what they were, I reminded myself. These sodden, schnockered spouts were the enemy.
That, I realized, was exactly Trina's unspoken point. And it was that which was making her face a bright red blotch against her green trunk, a Christmas display that only I could see, thanks to the optical filter in my own suit.
I calmed down, rose from an industrial-strength vat, and tried to slip away into the gathering. We - I - had attracted a Boffload of attention. Behind me, several younger stalks were trying to duplicate my feats. They plunged mid-way into frighteningly-strong Cola, rose, then to a stalk splatted over with wet flopping noises. You could almost set a watch by them, they were so regular. Splash. Flop. Splash. Flop. Splash. Flop.
"You idiot!" Trina hissed.
I nodded glumly. She was quite right.
"You said not to attract attention!"
"Point taken," I whispered. She didn't have to say any more, but naturally she did. Quite a bit more, in fact.
"You there!" called a voice some time later, finally interrupting her tirade. A big Boff was tottering towards us. I could tell Trina was reaching for her maser but I waved her off. Wait, I whispered.
"Yes, Fellow Spawn of the Great Seed?" I murmured as drunkenly as I could, hoping that Ned could handle the inflections convincingly. Either he could or it didn't matter, given my cola-clobbered audience.
; "An admirable display of soaking!" said the approaching Boff. His top was oddly frazzled, as if he'd had a bad experience with a thresher. As if a Boff could have any other kind of experience with a thresher.
"I enjoy the brew, no more and no less than any other Boff, as is fair and just," I said, or heard myself say. Ned, I knew, had helped me with that one. But this time he seemed to have done better. At least he wasn't volunteering me for any unspeakably despicable tasks. And my line seemed to have gone down as nicely as, well, Boffian ale.
"May I offer you with a soak of my custom batch?"
It might be rude to refuse, I rationalized. And, I didn't admit, it was tremendous fun to be so drink-proof. “Of course, friend."
"Men," Trina muttered in disgust. I made a face at her.
"This way, this way," said the stalk, and gestured us to follow. We shuffled off with knees bent and legs aching, towards one of the round green houses.
The stalk paused, turned, and rustled at us. “Forgive me, pod-mates. My manners have been drowned in a deep vat! I am Toona."
He paused. This time I knew what he was waiting for. On an Agent-style impulse I decided to take new identities. “I am Broc," I announced, hoping it wasn't a cuss word or personal insult on Boff. Ned flashed into being long enough to grimace at me as he translated it. “And this," I gestured at Trina, "is Coli."
Toona remained stock-still, as if considering. Or, I thought, as if rooted in place. I fondled my maser more affectionately. For all their oddities, the Boffs were big, strong, nasty, and malevolent; those green leafy folds hid long daggers of razor bone that could fillet an offender instantly.
"Oh!" Trina blurted over our link.
Toona finally bent sideways - a local nod. “Odd names, but honorable ones, given your talents."
I sighed with relief and explained that Trina - Coli - could not speak.
"No doubt she receives her compensations from the state," Toona replied.
"Only her just due," I said. “As fairness demands. All for Statistical Proportionality, and Statistical Proportionality for all."
"That's the saying," Toona said, and punctuated his comment with a Boffian shrug. A rippling, strangely unsavory motion.
We stopped beside his green hut, where a smallish bright green pool waited. It was almost fluorescent, with bobbing chunks of yellow, brown, and dark green floating about.
"Lovely," I sighed. Oh god, I thought.
"I use only the ripest of the nullberries, the foulest of the dung, and the most virulent of the neurotoxins," said Toona.
Invisible inside my aspara-suit, my jaw dropped. Ned appeared. “Just kidding. I made up that last bit. Make nice-nice noises."
"How marvelous," I said smoothly. Somehow, somewhere, I would get Ned for all this. It would probably be a Pyrrhic victory - after all, he was in my own head. But right then I hated him enough to cut my own head off just to spite it. I wondered - if I did it fast enough, would I be able to savor a moment of appreciation before it was all over?
"Unlikely," Ned answered.
"Please," Toona said, and gestured.
I eased into the pit. It felt like all the others - warm, wet, and sticky. Trina moved towards it, but I rustled a frond to stop her.
"Too strong," I said, and Ned translated it for Toona. Toona beamed at the compliment.
I eased in up my waist. Toona was the first Boff we'd been alone with.
"You must be dry, my friend!" Toona said. He himself was only knee-deep, which I could see was causing him some embarrassment. After all, it was his brew.
"Not really so strong," I said, and dipped deeper. The foul liquid lapped at my chest. “Though quite nice. A bit weak, but really quite decent."
Toona flushed pale red with shock. A pink tentacle unfurled from somewhere and waved at Trina. “But you said it was too strong for-"
"That one," I ad libbed in a faintly haughty tone, "has a processing disorder. Anything stronger than plain green water is too much. Don't be offended. This ale is quite nice, though, for the area."
As I'd expected, Toona was of course offended.
"Ah," he said. His green deepened. I had thrown down the Boffian version of a gauntlet. “Perhaps you are right," he said, and plunged deeper into the pit. He matched me, then went deeper, though for only a moment. The Boff skin is more permeable in its upper areas - so the deeper they submerge, the bigger slugs they take. Straight to the sap.
He retreated, somewhat shakily. “My deepest ever! And it was easy!" He did it again, to demonstrate. Then, just to be absolutely sure that the first two weren't flukes, he did it one more time.
He showed us the Boffian version of a silly grin - not pretty - and shivered. Even less pretty.
Then he flopped onto the side of the pool with the same wet sound we'd been hearing all night. I lifted his slimy, reeking body and propped him up. Beneath a thick leaf-like sheath I glimpsed a gleaming hook of curved bone, glinting wetly with deadliness. Another reminder that the Boffs weren't just buffoons, they were deadly buffoons.
"Not bad at all," Toona slurred.
"I am curious," I said, sensing that the time was right, "is it fair - or proportional - that you have such an excellent pit? Do others?"
Toona shivered, then began to shake. His green color paled to a near yellow. He suddenly looked like a house plant cursed with bad light.
"No! You are Testors! How can this be! Testors do not partake. They only ensure the Proportionality!"
He assumed the attitude of submission: Fronds tucked under, top stalk wilted.
"Toona, we are not Testors," I reassured him. Ned whispered in my ear; he constantly monitored nearby conversations, sieving them for data to cross-reference with the bits and nuggets we already had. Testors roamed the Boffian populace, ensuring that the mandates of Statistical Proportionality were met.
"You are!"
"But Testors do not partake," I pointed out.
"They do not," he slurred suspiciously.
I plopped back into the pool. “There. You see? I am partaking. Therefore-"
"You are not Testors!" Toona finished jubilantly. He relaxed, which looked like a sudden wilt.
I suddenly felt a very odd sensation. It reminded me of years before, on a smoky planet near Deneb, inhabited by a variety of unseemly parasites. One of the local nasties was the spray-fly, which lobs aerosol mists of eggs at any bodily orifices in range. Once inside, the eggs work their way into your brain, where, years later, they suddenly hatch.
The sensation of a great number of eggs hatching in the brain is said to be extremely, well, odd, and for a moment I wondered if this might be happening. But wouldn't Ned speak up? I decided that I wasn't feeling the hatching of cranial spray-fly eggs, though almost. I hadn't even seen a spray-fly on Deneb. The odd sensation was actually an idea. And since it is not in my nature to second-guess or analyze my own ideas, I blurted it out. Besides, it was a good one.
"Toona, Coli and I have only just reached sprouthood," I said.
"Congratulations," Toona slurred.
"We are learning the secrets and ways of our culture."
"They are many and complex," Toona put in seriously.
"Yes, yes, we know. We have studied Statistical Proportionality, and-"
"That is all you need, of course. You know that it was not always our way?"
"Ah, yes-" Great Zot, no! Not another lecture!
“Diz,” Trina hissed over the link. “Astor.”
Toona continued - he seemed to have a memorized spiel all ready to go. “Statistical Proportionality is a modified system of majority rule, which includes an overlay of certain carefully drawn protections for the less populous groups. For example, four percent of the population consists of frizzle tops. By government mandate, frizzle tops occupy four percent of each and every job category."
I groaned to myself. “But if there isn't a qualified frizzle top available?"
"You are a devil! You seek to trick me, to send me to the butter sauce m
ines!" I figured that was Ned having fun with some untranslatable term. “It doesn't matter if there isn't a qualified frizzle top available! That is not the point! The point is absolute, rigid, mandated equality! Only in this way can we achieve freedom! Besides, all qualifications are subjective and illusory!"
"Has the system always been like this?" I had to get this conversation to the point. A much different point than Toona was making. Maybe I could take this bull by the horns and steer it. Then again, the problem with taking bulls by horns is getting gored.
"No. And it will not always be. Only until we naturally, and inevitably, achieve absolute proportional participation."
Hmm. It sounded like I could introduce Toona to a few million Marxists who'd once been left at the altar of communism. “Doesn't that defy the odds?"
"We won't be stopped! It is too important! "
I was already tired of this. Toona was the worst kind of drunk: a boring drunk. Even violent drunks have the saving grace of being entertaining.
"Have another?" I inquired politely, splashing into the pit.
Toona staggered up. “Of course," he said.
I guided him to the deep end, and held him there for a long while. Actually, I held him there until his color began to change. Usually, I'd noticed, the color changes stayed in the brown-yellow-green end of things. Toona, however, took an exciting chromic swerve and began to verge on blue. I waited a while, curious to see how far he'd go. I finally quit at a nice aqua shade. A dead Boff might raise questions we didn't want to confront. I steered his quivering bulk to the side again.
He crashed down with an especially loud slap.
Toona's mind was still spewing out his last sentence. “-the natural pinnacle of eons of evolution! The culmination of the ages!"
Aha! An opening! A mere sliver, but an opening nonetheless! Enough, perhaps, for a Finger. “Is it true that the Old Ones once lived on Boff? That they are part of our evolution?" The Old Ones, that long-vanished race usually referred to as the "Oh-Ohs," were the actual builders of the Time Oscillator.
"They lived here," Toona slurred groggily, "but long before the first Boff crawled from the garden into the swamp. They left a trove of marvelous machines in orbit." That was common knowledge.
The Blue Marble Gambit Page 11
