"Where are these machines now?" I asked.
"A secret place! You will learn that at your initiation ceremony!"
No we wouldn't, because we wouldn't be having any initiation ceremony. I hoisted Toona back into the drink. “Have some more."
"Erg ufg," he said.
I lifted him up. His bilious yellow eyes were cloudy. “Where are these machines now?" I asked.
"Gastro," he rustled faintly. Great Zot! We already knew that!
I dunked him again, this time until his blue took on the faintest tinge of neon.
"Court!" Trina sizzled.
I brought him back up.
"But where in Gastro, great master Toona?" A little fawning goes a long way with most sentients. In fact, that was once seriously proposed as a test of sentiency by one of the Galactic Institutes: the ability to change one's behavior in response to shameless fawning, whether it be boot-licking, stalk-sucking, or pseudopod-fondling.
"The Hall of Marvels, in the Central Armory," he rattled weakly.
I dropped him with another loud slap and turned to Trina.
"Ahh-HO!"
CHAPTER 11. GASTROGNOMIC
We left Toona trembling quietly while we worked our way back to the hoverbus, where the others were already reboarding on thousands of shaky finger-legs. Orna, I noticed, looked rather bedraggled, and everyone shared a similar look of decided abuse, as if at the twisted hands of some evil Master Chef. If you saw any of them on your plate you'd pass them up and go straight to dessert. They were hardly even food anymore. After a moment's reflection I decided that they weren't excused from the hostile-food theory, since they would soon enough look like food again.
In the company of these sad salad rejects, the rest of the ride lasted nearly seven hours, which in a neat trick of subjective relativity managed to feel exactly one hour longer than eternity itself. Maybe, one decides at moments like this (moments? or just one single taffy-like moment, stretching infinitely?) eternal life wouldn't be so great.
The painful creep of time ground to a complete halt when, like some kind of indescribably rude synchronized swimming team, every Boff on board made that artless transition from drunk to desperately hungover. They announced their arrival in this new territory by extruding a wide array of putrid slimes, slimy gels, and gelatinous foams, from an even wider array of dribbling gaps, gaping pores and pouring apertures. The appearance alone was horrifying, and yet was almost pleasant compared to the squelching sounds and sulphurous odors.
Steaming yellow gourds; brown runny ropes; beige liquid. All running into the deep steel channels cut into the floorboards. Canals of horror. I began to wonder if we should do some fake extruding ourselves, but that was beyond both our technology and our preparations. And, frankly, our interests. Besides, our own activities - or lack - were clearly beyond the attentions of the belching, drooping, leaking, off-color Boffs.
Outside, we passed more of the same scenery. Or perhaps it was the same scenery over and over.
Green houses, small yards, five-legged pets.
Green houses, small yards, five-legged pets.
Green houses, small yards, five-legged pets.
Maddening. I felt my soul begin to skip gaily down that nice flower-lined mental path that leads to Insanity. You don't have such a path in your brain? Running right between the corpus callosum and the occipital lobe? Past the parietals, over the cerebellum? No? Well, then, good for you. I do, and in order to avoid taking it, I stopped looking outside. Of course, by default I then had to look inside. At the sick, and sickening, Boffs. I felt the pull. Come, it whispered. Be crazy. Then none of this will matter. You might even like it.
Trina's face was so stern with concentration that it looked like she was trying to mentally calculate pi to the last digit, and might succeed. Whatever she was doing, at least it was keeping her distracted. A sound policy. Since I wasn't in the mood for mental long division I left pi to Trina and silently called up Ned. I would try to reign in my careering subconscious by lassoing it and spurring it into the dignified mental trot of work.
Ned appeared as a tiny green elf on my shoulder. I didn't even blink at the appearance of this miniature fanciful creature. Sometimes I worried that after years of routinely accepting such appearances, I would eventually be so conditioned that I would ignore something big, obvious, and lethal, under the mistaken assumption that Ned was once again twisting my neurons for his own amusement. For example, a huge hovertruck with my name on it. Might I simply let it hit me, believing Ned was having his fun? Such concerns alone were good enough reason for having him ripped out between jobs - but the fact was, I spent a lot of time on jobs. Even when he was gone, I wondered about my perceptions. Suppose he wasn't really gone, but was just acting gone?
There it was again: the undertow tug of madness, trying to drag me out to the Sea of Insanity.
A tiny foot tapped impatiently on my shoulder. I could feel all five tiny toes. No, six. Of course. Silly me. Elves have six toes.
"What do we know," I silently asked Ned, "about our destination, the fine city of Gastro?"
In a high-pitched voice which was, though I hate to resort to the word, elfin, Ned launched into a short spiel about Gastro. It sounded like it was lifted directly from some tacky guidebook and was about as helpful. Gastro was a hyper-industrial city, the largest on Boff and the planetary capital. Our quarry, the Time Oscillator, according to trusty Toona, was in the Hall of Marvels of the Central Armory, located somewhere in the no-doubt green heart of the city. Beyond that, we didn't know much.
"The Central Armory," I mused. “Sounds like a light-hearted, fun place, full of sunlight, flowers, and laughing children."
"And so it is, except that on Boff the sunlight is green, the flowers are carnivorous, and the children are seeds," Ned sniffed. “By the way, the Central Armory was designed during the last major Boffian civil war, and is impregnable to most energy and all kinetic weapons. The minimum explosive necessary to crack it is estimated to be a Level 3 Egg."
Zot above, that wasn't very encouraging - not even a planet-buster could touch it. But not necessarily discouraging either - we had never had any intention of blasting our way in. Though the fact that it was so solid implied that it would also be tightly secured. Maybe not, argued a stray slice of my subconscious. Perhaps, the stray slice continued, with so few visitors on Boff, the security will be relatively light.
Possible, but unlikely, given the Boffs' general nature, agreed the much larger portion of my subconscious that I identified with. It may seem odd to think of yourself this way, but having someone like Ned inside your skull works wonders on your perspective.
Ned ignored the internal debate and continued, though my sub-cranial dialectic seemed to guide his lecture. “The Central Armory is protected by the Vegetorian Guard, an outfit of crack Boff troops."
I sat back and tried to make myself as comfortable as possible when surrounded by a sodden mass of reeking, drooping plant creatures. Many of them were now, I saw with disgust, completing the final turn of that downward spiral from drunkenly pathetic to pathetically hungover. I focused on Ned as pale foam fizzed from my neighbors.
"The Vegetorian Guard? Seems I've heard of them."
"Possibly. They are the elite, renowned for their cruelty, ruthlessness, and special hatred for offworlders."
"Yum. They sound like ideal parents." A nearby Boff shivered, froze, then began to leak yellow jello.
"Ha ha. In fact they are. In order to emphasize such traits in the species, they are allowed to produce extra sprouts. Ironically, your attempt at sarcasm was unintentionally accurate."
"Pity," I muttered, not watching as what looked like but certainly wasn't hydraulic fluid ran from looked like but certainly wasn't a navel. “Won't let it happen again. So, elf-boy, how do we penetrate this armory, so that we can marvel at the Marvels?" The Time Oscillator would be only one of the thousands of ancient machines left by the mysterious Oh Ohs. All the devices were, if not devi
lishly complex, at least demonically hard to figure out, and of the thousands, so far Galactic science had been able to decipher only one.
That one had taken a team of top Galactic scientists over fifteen years; never before in history had such an amount of first-rate brainpower been expended on a single problem. The Galaxy had waited with breathless anticipation until it got tired of holding its breath, and then it simply waited. Years passed, and still the Galaxy waited, though at least it was no longer blue in the face. When the announcement finally came it was in unexpectedly subdued tones: "success." Not "Success!" or "Yippee!" Just "success." This was explained when the team of top Galactic scientists revealed that they had deciphered the operation of an almost-but-not-quite-sentient joke telling machine which, due to its age, could never quite remember the punch lines. Perhaps that was the joke.
The almost-but-not-quite-sentient joke telling machine was the only machine the Boffs ever made available for study; the others were kept locked away in the Hall of Marvels. One of these, the Galaxy agreed, was a Time Oscillator; a bit of surviving Oh Oh script seemed to confirm this. But no one had the faintest idea how to work it.
Except, of course, just possibly Trina. Regardless, after the incident with the almost-but-not-quite-sentient joke machine, the Boffs cut all further access to their trove of Oh Oh machines. There were two schools of thought on this, one saying they were horribly mortified at the whole thing, and the other that they were pleased as punch with the almost-but-not-quite-sentient joke machine, and couldn't possibly have wanted anything else, an unfinished joke being like a well-cut bikini and leaving more to the imagination.
But despite the lack of access Trina and other scientists had been able to study the Time Oscillator remotely, from the records made available, and Trina thought she had a chance at making it go.
I realized that Ned had neatly ducked my question. Of course, an elf can easily duck most questions. In fact, an elf doesn't even need to duck to duck questions.
I blew a puff of air at the elf. His hair - green, by the way - blew around very realistically. “Well, Dopey-"
"Dopey was a dwarf. I'm an elf."
"Whatever. I'm still waiting, with some anticipation, for you to tell me how we're going to get into the Hall of Marvels."
The elf on my shoulder fidgeted about idly, gazing back and forth. Time passed, and he said nothing. He folded his tiny arms in tiny contemplation.
I reached a finger towards him and administered a stern flick. I felt a bony crack and a flat pain in my finger and the little green figure rocketed across the bus, splatted against a window, and dropped out of sight like a shot bird.
I was about to lunge to my feet to search for Ned - my God, had I killed him? - when I recalled that the whole thing was a fake. Ned controlled it all, creating the appropriate images and sensations. Tweaking this to make my finger feel that, lighting a fire there to make me see this. It's a bit disquieting, having a mad projectionist running amok inside your head, making up whatever film clips he wants to subject you to, and all the while you never know what's real and what isn't.
But I was pretty sure that elves weren't real. At least, I was pretty sure that this one wasn't.
The little elf, battered and bedraggled, crawled into view from beneath Orna's pile of wilted tentacles, passing through a curtain of pulsating purple spaghetti like an actor entering a stage. The elf was dragging one leg, like a bird with a broken wing. He reached the base of my aspara-suit and began climbing, painfully slowly. Hand over tiny hand. With mewling, pitiful cries.
It was pathetic to see, and it was meant to evoke sympathy. That made me suspicious. There was only one reason Ned would try to buy sympathy: if he really needed it. Rather, if he really really needed it.
And to my way of thinking there was only one reason he would need sympathy so desperately.
"There is no plan," I subvocalized. In the haste of throwing this mission together, I had simply assumed that someone would have thought about this and devised an appropriately complex, evil, and effective scheme. Why I should have thought this is a complete mystery. In all my years of Fist service no such thing has ever happened. Once, after an unpleasant incident involving a planet of flammable gases which, in an explosively ironic twist of fate, was inhabited by tiny match-like creatures, I had inquired about this of my Uncle, in a gentle scream. He laughed, slapped my back heartily, and told me that having no plan was exactly the plan. My profile, he said, indicated that I was a first-rate improviser. To saddle me with a plan might blind me to better alternatives.
But this was different. The fate of the entire planet was riding on this. The fate of the entire human race. In such a situation, no one in their right mind would simply lob a single Finger into the Fray and hope for the best. It was irresponsible. Dangerous. Reckless. Inconceivable. It was probably some other things as well, and I would have thought of them, but I got interrupted.
"There is no plan," the elf agreed.
I nearly stood up and screamed, before remembering that I was supposed to be a hungover Boff.
"Er, Court, let me re-phrase that," Ned said hastily, finally cresting my shoulder. After briefly raising both hands in triumph, he folded his shattered leg beneath his smudged tunic. “There isn't a plan yet. There just wasn't enough information. It was thought best to leave the plan to your, ah, discretion." Ned was using both a conciliatory tone and my name. That meant he was expecting me to be outraged. I took a moment to gather my wits. Think, Court. No disasters, diz Astor.
The bus smoothly cornered, all the Boff stalks rocking like wheat in the wind. I had a glorious vision of threshers, marching in a proud line across a field of meek, passive plants. Lopped-off stems flying high in looping, grisly arcs. If we survived this, I resolved to spend some time on a farm, merrily harvesting away. Call me sap-thirsty.
Ned rubbed his tiny hands at his tinier eyes and stared outside. “Look at the bright side, Court. We're close to it, wherever it is."
"Huh?"
He made a grand sweeping gesture, one you wouldn't expect such a miniature creature to be capable of. “We're here. Welcome to the city of Gastro."
I jolted and looked outside. Tall buildings of green, yellow, brown, and pale red reached for the brown sky; the rectangle was evidently out of fashion, or had never been invented, for the buildings were pyramidal, conical, wavy sided, cylindrical - everything but square. It was a smorgasbord of complex and erratic geometry. Euclid's worst nightmare, in vegestone and plasticrete and who knew what. The avenues were broad and hedge-lined; the vehicles all very odd-looking, given the odd shape of our stalk-like hosts. It made me think how human history might have been different if, a hundred millennia ago, some genetic Eve had decided she preferred, for example, pointy heads instead of round ones. If that ancestral nymph had chosen Oog instead Thog. She might have passed her preference on to future generations; it could have become a hallmark of human beauty.
Look, Oola! Such a tall, pointy head!
Oh yes! The pointier the better! Nevermind the difficult births!
All our doorways would be different. Airplanes would be less aerodynamic. The hat industry would never have evolved, although, of course, it might simply have been replaced by the head-sleeve industry.
So perhaps the lesson, I decided as I grimaced at our monstrous companions, was this: There but for the grace and good taste of some long-dead forebears go I.
The hoverbus made a quick turn and I had the sense that we were now deep in the dark green heart of this urban jungle. The streets seemed to close in; the twisted buildings leaned to overhang us. A slow right, then a hard left, and the hoverbus glided into a huge dome-roofed cavern that had to be a terminal.
If I had been involved in such research I might have found it interesting to note that hoverbus terminals on Boff seemed to attract the same general class of folk that flocked to hoverbus terminals on Earth. A certain percentage of fine upstanding individuals, of course, but for some reason the coming
and going of large pieces of machinery seems to attract some of the worst elements, and even to bring out the worst sides of these unfortunates. How else to explain all the weird, unspeakable, bizarre behavior seen in every form of transit terminal? Do some people actually have the following conversation:
"Honey, I am feeling absolutely wacky today. Crazy, even."
"Off to the hoverbus terminal then, are you?"
"Absolutely. Where else?"
"Have fun!"
Of course, I wasn't doing such research, so I didn't find it all that interesting. I found it only mildly depressing. Then again, I could hope, maybe it only looked true here.
Our hoverbus slid into a wide slot and with a groaning hiss settled to the gray-green Boffcrete. That's what it was called, according to Ned. And outside, on that very Boffcrete, bushels of Boffs jostled and bumped, their sheaves flaring in irritation. The hoverbus passengers growled and snapped and wheezed as they gathered their items with pink-frosted tentacles and trundled off the bus. Trina and I waited until the end, and were the last to go. I watched the others carefully, hoping to get some idea about which way we should go, or at least, and just as importantly, which way not to go. It wouldn't do to blunder right through a "No Entry On Pain Of Being Served As A Side Dish," sign. We had to find the way to the Hall of Marvels, somewhere within the Central Armory, wherever that was.
But for all my attentive study I didn't pick up a thing. I was clueless as, well, as a primate in an aspara-suit.
No matter, though. One crisis at a time. For the moment our task was simply to avoid being exposed. As soon as we hit the strangely spongy surface I set off briskly. You can't let ignorance stop you. Just think where we'd be if some people, many of whom have achieved high public office, did that. Well, maybe it would be better not to think of that.
"This way," I murmured, pointing us towards a line of tall triangular doors. We moved along with a large crowd; it seemed like a safe destination, since everyone else was going there. Obviously, I had forgotten the valuable lesson taught by lemmings.
The Blue Marble Gambit Page 12
