"Yes, Orna. Ahh-HO!"
We slurped away merrily for a time. Ned had done a passable job with our tubes - they sought out likely chunks of whatever was floating, and then reasonable imitations coursed up them. I noticed that the faux chunks vanished about halfway up, but Ned hadn't had a lot of time. Orna's tube darted and poked in a frenzy.
I took a deep breath, forced down a disgusted swallow, and spoke. “So we're in the Guard?"
One of Orna's eyes ratcheted towards me, gecko-style, while the other two hungrily scanned the pool. “Not quite yet, of course. But I have a plan of action, to achieve your goals and save the Boffian way. At first light tomorrow we will go to see the Great Pod Leader himself. A mere formality, as I will sponsor you myself. But all Guard applicants must interview with the Great Pod Leader. The Vegetorian Guard is elite!" Then he murmured, perhaps a bit sadly, "or least it used to be."
But I was focused on something else he had just said. An unforeseen snaggle in my plan. Which could have the same unpleasant result as the unforeseen noose waiting atop the gallows for the prisoner who thought stair-climbing good exercise.
"The Great Pod Leader?" I said blandly.
"The same," Orna said proudly.
"Of the pod?" I asked Ned, then smoothly asked Orna, "Will he see us?"
"Of the planet," Ned replied. “There is only one."
The whole planet? Security, weapons scanners, high scrutiny? We were doomed!
"Surely he is too busy," I backpedaled. If Boffs had legs long enough to see, mine would have been churning.
Orna made a dismissive gesture. “Don't be silly. I have known him since Sprouthood. My office is beside his."
"Your office," I said dully. Ned informed me that the word Orna actually used was closer to "garden-plot" than "office," but that the latter conveyed the idea.
"Yes, even for an old soldier like me, life isn't all combat." He made that crackling lip-smacking sound again, which was somewhat disquieting since he had no lips. “The Great Bog truly works in mysterious ways. For it was the Great Bog that brought us together."
"Ahh-HO!" I said.
He looked at me strangely, then his feeding tube vanished like a very rude magic trick. “Now I am tired. We shall sleep," Orna announced. “You will need your rest. Tomorrow you meet the Great Pod Leader himself."
That, I thought desperately, could not possibly be a good thing. Instead of just trying the Central Armory, we were going into what would no doubt be the tightest security on the entire planet of Boff. We were doomed, doomed, doomed. I was about to tell Orna that we had changed our minds when I noticed that our green spear of a host was limply leaning back in the tank. He made an odd rustle, which Ned identified, sotto voce, as a snore.
He was sleeping in the tank.
But it was worse than that. Trina and I were expected to sleep in the tank. Which, I recalled, had a chemical composition all too similar to - ug. The tank arrangement made a certain kind of sense - there was no need for privacy, ever, when your most intimate acts could be carried out quite calmly in public, with all the pomp and pageantry of making change.
I wanted desperately to climb out. But if Orna awoke and found us out of the tank, that might strain even his ability to excuse our oddities. I whispered to Trina, and she reluctantly agreed.
We settled in for the night.
CHAPTER 13. MONKEYSTEWED
After about nine or ten decades soaking in that putrid broth, a dim green light finally seeped through the dagger door. Apparently the entire cavern was illuminated, to simulate dawn in the great Boff outdoors.
Orna rustled and flopped and stirred, then slithered upward and outward, somehow landing neatly on his thousands of feet. He gazed at us pitifully.
"Come, come, young spouts. You cannot sleep your lives away."
"Already?" I groaned in my best imitation of a teenager facing dawn. “So early."
"You must become used to this, if you want to make the Guard. Only the toughest, the most fibrous, the Guard, you know." This was evidently some type of slogan.
I leapt out of the pool, to demonstrate my eagerness if not the sinewy nature of my stalk. In doing so I accidentally slopped a brown splash over the edge. Orna glared at it distastefully.
"Hopefully we will burden your hospitality for no more than a dozen cycles or so," I said blandly, "before we join the Guard."
Orna immediately understood. “Hopefully much sooner. I should be able to expedite the process. Now, come along."
Inside the disguise generated by the morph-pack, I chewed a mealbar while following Orna. He led us out of his building and through Gastro, twisting and turning like a rat that knows its maze. He stopped before a yellow panel in a red wall, waggled his top tassel, and it slid aside. We went through the doorway, and found a series of moving walkways, like pedestrian highways. About forty feet wide, the near edge of the mobile span was moving slowly, while the far edge was flying along. The speed changed gradually along the width. We stepped onto the slow portion and followed Orna out to the center section, where we passed the slow lane but were in turn passed by the fast. A mobile forest of other Boffs accompanied us as we whisked through the bowels of Gastro.
Occasional signs pointed directions. “Ah, Ned? A translation?" I prompted. If we were ever going to find our own way around, we had to start compiling a map. Already it might be too late; the passages were twisty as a snake den.
"Working on it," Ned said distantly. He flickered into being for a bare moment: a gnarled gnome, bent over and madly scribbling by candlelight on yellowed parchment with a huge quill pen.
The walkway curved through a series of low tunnels, each dark but high-ceilinged. Loops of cable, or maybe roots, sprouted from the walls. It was dim and dank, and unpleasant enough, though not as unpleasant as a night in a Boffian hot tub.
Without a warning or backward glance Orna began moving to the slow edge. We followed, closely. Despite the risks, going through with our Great Pod Leader scheme was the best way. It was risky, but so was abandoning that course or ditching Orna. Most persuasively of all, we had no other plan for finding the Time Oscillator, and time was running out. There were only five days left. Half our time gone.
Orna pulled off the moving walkway and steamed straight towards another yellow rectangular section of wall, top tassel waggling furiously. It slid aside and we were outside again, although at first it was hard to tell. The tapered fangs of the buildings rose several thousand feet and seemed to bite into the sky, leaving visible only narrow ribbons of dull red-brown. One particular edifice, towards which Orna was leading us, was unique in its vibrant green color and rather dome-like shape. It looked like an artichoke.
According to my food and aliens theory, that was a very bad sign. If aliens that looked like food were bad, a whole building that looked like food had to be a torture chamber. But every rule has its exceptions, I told myself hopefully. Perhaps this was one of them.
Two husky asparagi at the slash-shaped entrance moved away for Orna, with an obsequiousness that transcended the species gap. It was rather disconcerting to see that the gullible and slightly buffoonish Orna held a high position. Of course, I reminded myself, he was not necessarily gullible. The morph pack-generated aspara-suits were just that good. Another possibility presented itself: he was that good, and he was onto us.
Orna led us through long descending corridors and down occasional round, peaked jetvators. If this building really was modeled on some sort of plant, we were deep in the roots. We leveled out and entered a large anteroom; it was devoid of anything like furniture, and held only a medium-sized noxious green pool. The lone soaking stalk was some form of secretary. Orna discharged a few haughty words, and we were waved on by a droopy tassel.
The next chamber held a larger pool, and Orna's tone was less haughty. And so it was again in the next. And the next. Ever bigger pools, and an ever more polite Orna. We were, I realized, ascending the food chain of Boffian bureaucracy.
W
e finally came to another chamber, with an entranceway of the brightest, most nauseous green I had ever seen.
Orna glanced at us. “The Great Pod Leader!" he whispered, and led the way through the gap.
This final chamber had a high domed ceiling of mottled brown, supported by ornamental stalk-like pillars. The huge pool which filled the room was as chunky as homemade soup though quite a bit greener. The Great Pod Leader himself had to be the lone tall stalk in the drink. He seemed to have soaked for far too long - he appeared positively mushy. A ring of especially large and heavily-armed Boffs circled the pond. The Great Pod Leader's personal guard, no doubt.
Orna performed a bow, shiver, and twirl of respect, then began a series of trite platitudes, complimenting the Great Pod Leader's full top tassel and robust color, though the former was actually rather bedraggled and the latter somewhat pale. Orna was showing a universal trait: affection for the boss's excretory organ.
Throughout it all the Great Pod Leader seemed rather uninterested. Orna moved to business.
"These two saplings," he said, with the wave of a tentacle, "have just come of age. They wish to join the Guard." In retrospect, I had to grudgingly admit, Ned's decision to make us young Boffs had paid off - it fit in perfectly with our desire to join the Guard, and it explained our stupidity, to some degree, since we were not yet initiated.
The Great Pod Leader seemed to perk up. “My Vegetorian Guard?"
"Quite. The same."
The Great Pod Leader was a discerning one. “There's more to this, methinks, than meets my three eyes."
"You are right as always, Great Pod Leader," Orna said. “One is unable to speak. The other is just plain stupid."
The Leader of All Things Green settled deeper into his stew. “Then they are unqualified."
Orna shifted from foot to foot to foot - over a thousand times, in fact, as those busy little appendages stamped away. “Well, yes. So it would seem at first. But under the laws of Statistical Proportionality, because our population consists of some stupid individuals and some non-speakers, we must have the same in the Guard. Otherwise, where will it end? Our very system may be crumbling before our eyes."
"Perhaps," the Great Leader calmly replied. “Or perhaps Statistical Proportionality itself is simply stupid."
Orna was stunned into silence at this heresy. Since it was from his leader, he was unsure whether to join it. But could it be a test? A trap? There was no safe path. I imagined lumpen cogs grinding together in his lumpen brain.
"Never mind," the Great Leader said. “If you wish to place them in the Guard, so be it. All the Guard does anyway, between you and I, old Orna, is protect those ancient chunks of metal left by the Oh Ohs. Which no one knows how to use anyway. As long as the Master VegePuter agrees that their addition truly would further the estimable goals of Statistical Proportionality, they may join." He vanished downward until just the top of his tassel protruded. The fronds shivered and his voice followed.
"Anything else?"
"No, Great Pod Leader."
"Good," the Great Pod Leader said, then raised his voice. “Master VegePuter, we have two for your review. They wish to be in The Guard."
This was similar to the moment that all Boffs faced upon reaching Sprouthood, although only applicants to The Guard had to audition before the Great Pod Leader. Young Boffs weren't tracked throughout their existence - if so, we would have needed complex fake identities. Instead, once mature they were assessed and meticulously categorized, every personal variable neatly pigeon-holed to fit every Boff into the appropriate group, and from there each and every Boff was directed to a Proportionally-proper career. Ned thought the categorization wouldn't be a problem - it was rather superficial, and the morph-packs were very very good.
We hoped.
Three green lights glowed to life in the far wall. A mechanical tentacle dipped downward from the ceiling, its tip bulging with small barbarous sensors. No doubt this was the very implement that would quickly categorize us, assign us to a class, and decide the representational needs of that class.
"Hope that thing's not cold," I joked.
“Probably just a fist-sized anal probe,” Ned replied.
The Master VegePuter clicked and buzzed and whirred as the tentacle circled us, thoughtfully twitching while it moved round and round and up and down. It reminded me of a contemplative earthworm.
It made only a single orbit before it began to retract into the ceiling. “Unacceptable. They lack the most essential qualifications," the Master VegePuter announced.
"Exactly," I cried out. “That's why we're perfect." In for a millicredit, in for a starbuck.
The tentacle froze, halfway into the ceiling, as Orna laid out our position, no doubt motivated by a desire to evict his new roomies. He did quite an admirable job of it, too.
"Sounds stupid, at first," said the Great Pod Leader to the Master VegePuter. “But there is a certain logic to it."
"Even so. It is not possible," the Master VegePuter said with mechanical solemnity, and began to retract again.
"Oh well. Thanks anyway," I said, suddenly overwhelmed by a very ominous feeling.
But Orna shushed me with a rustle. “But is it not true that none of their puny intellectual caliber are - or ever have been - in the Guard?" he asked.
"That is true."
"Is it not true that none with their paltry physical abilities are - or ever have been - in the Guard?"
"That is also true."
Orna's sheaves twitched. “But then-"
The Master Vegeputer didn't let him finish. “Because of those deficiencies, they are in fact uniquely qualified."
Gotcha, I thought.
"But they are disqualified by another deficiency."
What?
Uh oh, Ned said.
"Exactly what other qualification are they lacking?" asked Orna suspiciously. Somewhere in that thick-skinned green hide, I would decide in a matter of mere seconds, hid not only razor-sharp scythes of bone, but a razor-sharp mind. He made a subtle gesture, which I also wouldn't appreciate until moments later, but at which the Boff guards moved in closer.
"The most essential one of all," replied the Master VegePuter. “They are not Boffs at all. They are humans."
CHAPTER 14. CLOWNBOY
The most amazing thing, to me, about the Boff prison was that we survived long enough to get there.
As soon as the Master VegePuter made its solemn and woefully accurate pronouncement, the Boff guards fell upon us in full vegetable fury. Which, by the way, bears precious little resemblance to your normal conception of vegetable anger. In fact, in their enthusiasm for violence the Boffs were quite animal. Through the whipping tentacles and flashing blades I dimly noticed that Orna had positioned himself well out of the way. He, at least, had seen what was coming.
Several of the Boffs couldn't restrain their zest and the wet yellowish bone scythes flicked and snicked, cutting our morphsuits to shreds. It wasn't long before they hauled us both out of our flayed green skins.
I felt completely naked standing there in my black Fist jumpsuit; after days of immersion, my eyes actually took some offense at the human form. Trina looked . . . Alien, and I was shocked to find myself actually looking at my former skin fondly. It looked smaller and thinner than I would have supposed, this now-shed second skin. And suddenly it seemed that we'd had happy times together, it and I. Oh, the fun of cleaning up Orna's mess on the hoverbus. The rambunctious thrills of the Boff drinking binge. The slumber party at Orna's. Those were the days!
Or so they seemed, compared to the present. After long, uncomfortable, and downright painful interrogations, Trina and I found ourselves stripped of our weapons and morph-packs and locked in a large and windowless stone vault somewhere deep in the bowels of the Boffian Central Security Facility. Which happened to lie deep beneath the Central Armory and its fabled Hall of Marvels.
The irony was neck-deep, or better. For this was, of course, that same building that he
ld the closely-guarded Time Oscillator, somewhere within the Hall of Marvels, the museum of the ancient and the alien. On a percentage basis, and considering the light-years we'd travelled, we had come at least 99.999 percent of the distance. With our captor's unwitting help, we were closer than ever.
Of course, that last 0.001 percent was the key.
And now unachievable. I limped to the door - a huge steel slab that weighed a kiloton if a gram - and tried it. I might as well try to tow a starship by a strap in my teeth. The infinitely branching paths that make up any person's future had, in our case, abruptly been pruned back. Our possibilities were all alike: each was nasty, brutish, and short. Even gnarled. Only one uncertainty remained for us: how the Boffs would execute us.
That topic was even now being debated hotly and with great relish. Under the Boffian code, it all depended on what we were guilty of. Espionage would earn us the right to be flayed alive by the populace at large. Trespassing would offer us the chance to be ground into fertilizer for new recruits in the Boffian army. Lacking the proper papers allowed us to be boiled alive; impersonating a Boff carried the odd but still unpleasant penalty of being broiled alive. Illegal planetary entry would get us dropped from space. And there were others. Many others.
I was trying to decide which of those outcomes to root for; surely I must have a favorite. But somehow I couldn't develop any enthusiasm for any.
I moved along the rough stones of the wall. Each was a huge, immovable block. Nevertheless, I listlessly tried each, searching for loose joints. Missing mortar. Gaps. Cracks. Defects. Something. Anything. Court diz Astor does not give up, no matter the odds, no matter the outlook.
I gave up. No windows, no secret passages, no nothing. The only way out was through that thick steel door, and the only way we'd be going out that way would be feet first.
The Blue Marble Gambit Page 14
