by B. V. Larson
“Exactly,” Turov said. “It was also training for the human troops to be familiarized with the fighting conditions of the target planet. But you couldn’t even do that right! So… now that you understand your gross errors, do you want to know what’s happening next?”
I didn’t answer her. The truth was, I was feeling a little bit sick. The Blood Worlders were gross and vicious, but they didn’t deserve to be permed in a lousy exercise. How many had I killed? Five hundred at least, by my estimate.
Damn.
I turned to Graves angrily. “You should have told me what was going on, sir,” I said. “I had no idea I was perming those men. If I’d known… well, things would have gone differently.”
“A confession?” Turov purred. “You’re slipping, James.”
I didn’t care about that, so I didn’t even look at her. My glare was entirely aimed at Graves. This was a big mess, and I didn’t think it was fair to blame me for all of it.
“Maybe…” he said. “Maybe in retrospect, you’re right. I should have let the centurions in on the nature of the game. But tell me, would you have been happy to know that any percentage of the Blood Worlders you fought were going to be permed?”
“No.”
“Right. So, I was balancing two problems. Both of them were rooted in the typical lack of discipline that’s rampant in this legion.”
“You can retire, sir. Any day of the week. But this will still be Legion Varus, even after you’re gone.”
Graves looked at me thoughtfully. “I wonder…”
“Gentlemen,” Turov said, clearing her throat. “If you two are done swinging your dicks around, it’s time to send James on his way.”
“Yes… it’s overdue.”
As Graves said this, he began checking his sidearm. He stood up and walked around the desk, approaching me.
“Hey,” I said. “I thought you guys were going to demote me, or something.”
“There’s been a change of plans, James,” Turov said. Her voice seemed to have softened a little. Could she be regretting what was about to happen? “You see, we’ve got to execute you. The Blood Worlder legion officers are demanding it. We’ll revive you later and slip you back into active duty, if all goes well—once we arrive at the target world.”
“Huh?” I said, confused. “You mean you’re putting me on ice for a few months? I’m going to stay dead until you need me again?”
“Sort of,” she explained. “Now, if you’ll—”
But I never heard whatever she planned to tell me next. Maybe she wanted me to kneel or something—I could have told her that wasn’t going to happen.
Graves approached me confidently and put the muzzle of his pistol up against my temple.
I didn’t flinch, I didn’t even look at him. But I’d been hiding that bolt gun, and so I put it up against his chest and fired it.
This was a pretty big breach of protocol for me. Normally, I took my beatings and executions stoically, like a good soldier should. But this time, I’d reacted emotionally. After all, I simply didn’t think any of this was fair. They’d put me in a pit and told me to fight—well, I’d fought to the best of my ability. It’s not right to tell a man whose life is on the line to pull punches.
The kill-gun’s blast wasn’t a loud one. The charge was just enough to fire a length of steel through his sternum and into his heart.
He fired his weapon too, but I’d already batted it away from my head.
As he sagged down, his eyes registering shock, I considered that he shouldn’t have gotten so close. You would have thought he knew me better than that by now.
“Overconfidence,” I said to him as he slid down onto his back.
“Dammit, McGill!” Turov snarled. “You’re blowing everything! This is being recorded, you fool. The Blood Worlder officers must not see shit like this! They already think we’re insane!”
“Sorry about the mess on your carpet, Galina,” I told her. “I guess you’ll have to revive Graves and bring him back up here to have another go at it.”
That’s when she shot me. Sneaky woman. She’d kept her distance. With nothing but the tiny range of my bolt-gun and my fists, I didn’t stand an even chance.
“Now,” she said, standing over me.
I lay on my back, gasping. There were holes in my chest—plenty of them. Way more damage had been done than I could ever hope to repair with smart bandages.
Galina sure was pretty, I reflected. But she was also a serious bitch when she was angry.
“I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen next,” she began in a deceptively calm voice, “just so you don’t screw anything else up. You’ve got the full text of the Mogwa book on you right now. We’re using you as a courier. You’ll be revived at a secret destination, far from here. They will take the text, and you will let them. Do you understand?”
“I…I don’t have it…” I wheezed.
“Yes you do, James,” she said confidently. “It’s on your tapper. Floramel wrote it all out, and sent it to you. The message is encrypted, of course, but—”
My hand shot out, forming a bloody claw that grabbed her by the calf. She squeaked and tried to dance away, but she couldn’t escape. Her gun came up, but she hesitated when she realized I wasn’t trying to kill her.
“No…” I said, understanding something now with grim certainty. “I deleted that message.”
“You did what? You deleted the message from Floramel?”
“Yes…”
“But why?” she demanded, lowering her face into mine.
My vision was dimming, and I thought to myself that if this was my final moment, it wouldn’t be a bad way to go. At least Galina looked a lot better than Graves did.
“It…” I said, struggling with the words, “…it was too damned long.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she screeched. “Xlur will freak out!”
She straddled me, and she grabbed my bloody tunic with her two small fists. She shook me.
She might have slapped me too, or even have pistol-whipped me, but my nerves weren’t reporting much up to my distant brain any more.
“McGill? Don’t die yet, damn you!” she shouted, and she might have said more, but I never heard it.
A final thought did impinge on my dying mind, however. Had she said something about Chief Inspector Xlur? I thought perhaps that she had…
But it didn’t matter a moment later because by then I’d died on the floor between her sweet, blood-soaked thighs.
-19-
Coming to life again was like waking up from a strange night of bad dreams. I was hazy, confused…
It felt like it had been a long time. Could they have given up on sending me to the Mogwa and simply revived me back on Legate instead? I dared to hope that was the case.
But strange sounds and scents soon dissuaded me of any such comforting thoughts. The environment I was in—it was all wrong.
First off, the air was sticky… As a man from southern Georgia Sector, I was no stranger to humidity, but revival chambers on human transport ships were always cool and dry. Always. This room was humid to the extreme—I could feel it on every exposed stretch of my skin.
It was brightly lit and hot, too. My eyes weren’t open yet, as fresh-grown eyes are always overly-sensitive—but this level of light was unprecedented. I felt like someone was aiming a hot headlight into my face.
Squinching up my eyes, I did the opposite of opening them. I closed them even tighter.
The sounds were wrong, too. Normally, I awoke hearing medical jargon between human bio people as they scanned me and discussed my vitals. Instead, I heard some odd clicking noises. They were rhythmic and varied, coming out in organized bursts.
Could those be alien words? I thought they probably were. I’d heard enough samples to know the way they usually sounded.
Something poked me in the ribs about then, and I groaned, slapping it away. The touch was nasty. Kind of like a wet, bony hand. I almost open
ed my eyes at that, but remembered to squinch them shut. The bright light here was going to hurt if I opened them now.
A warbling sound began a moment later, and I heard a series of tones that sounded human. As if tuning-in a radio signal, the tones focused and became clear at last, dividing into intelligible words.
“It will stand and exit the chamber,” an automated voice said.
That was a Galactic translator. I talked to Nairbs with these things on many occasions.
“It’s too damned bright in here,” I complained. “Turn off some lights so I can see.”
“Ah, of course. You are a pathetic dark-worlder. I’d forgotten your disabilities.”
There was a rustling, and the room dimmed. I opened my eyes at last in relief.
The Mogwa stood at the window. He’d adjusted the light that glared in from outside—apparently these windows could be shaded at will, like those in every hotel room on Earth.
But even when dimmed down to a tolerable intensity, what a view it was!
The exterior of the building—whatever the hell building I was in—looked out upon a sprawling city. We were apparently high up in a spire. The strangely shaped structures, mostly built with dull metals, stretched to the horizon and perhaps beyond.
My brain was still a little hazy, but I had the presence of mind to reach over and touch the record button on my tapper. The sights, the sounds and a dozen other things began to be tracked. If I ever made it back home, the nerds under Central would go nuts for this stuff.
“That’s quite a view,” I said. “What’s this city called?”
“It has no name. It is ‘the City’. The planet itself is known as Trantor. You are very fortunate to have a surface view. Too bad its glory is wasted on your dull eyes.”
Getting down from a cold metal table, I walked to that window and looked around. After a moment of studying the endless city, I glanced up.
That was a shock. I’m used to starscapes, don’t get me wrong—but this!
An explosion of suns hung overhead. They were like stars, but much bigger and brighter than any that have ever graced Earth’s skies. Each star was like a moon, brilliant, intense, varied in hue and size. There were dozens of them, and dozens more smaller orbs hung in between the brightest.
I gasped. “This is a star cluster. A tight cluster, by the look of it.”
Glancing back over my shoulder I saw the Mogwa who had attended me. He was working a device, something like one of our tappers. Doubtlessly, he was reporting my status to his masters—perhaps to Xlur himself.
“What’s your name, Mr. Mogwa?” I asked.
“It is improper for a lesser being to so directly address a superior. However, I will let it go today, as you are a frontier barbarian.”
“Thanks,” I said.
A silence followed. He never did tell me his name.
“Uh…” I said. “What are we waiting for, your supreme overlordship, sir?”
“The arrival of your master. Here, put this on. It bears his mark.”
He handed me a big bracelet. It was ridiculously oversized, but I tried it on my wrist anyway.
The Mogwa made some of those nasty farting sounds their kind did when they laughed.
“No, imbecilic being,” he said. “It goes around the neck.”
Finally, I caught on. It was a collar. A slave collar.
Spinning it around carefully in my hand, I found an engraving. It looked like a spider holding a flag or something. Could that be the “mark” this other bastard had been talking about?
Just then, a door appeared. It occurred to me then that I hadn’t seen any doors in this chamber, only a single window. The door was indistinguishable from the rest of the wall until it was activated, then it seemed to melt away to nothing.
Another Mogwa appeared at the entrance.
He took one look at me, then admonished the technician who’d revived me. “The beast isn’t collared? Why have you failed me?”
“He only just arose,” the first Mogwa complained. “He’s slow. Are you sure his mental capacities haven’t been impaired?”
The newcomer sniffed and stepped closer. He inspected me briefly.
“This is the McGill-creature.”
“How can you tell them apart?”
“This specimen is of unusual size for the species.”
That’s when I caught on. I thought this second guy looked familiar.
“Chief Inspector Xlur!” I shouted, giving him a smile. “Good to see you, Your Holiness, sir.”
Xlur eyed me disdainfully. “Your grunting syllables do not entirely translate. No matter. We require very little input from you. Follow me—and put that collar on before someone sees you.”
For a second, I balked. I didn’t like the thought of collaring myself, not for any reason.
“Um… could I have some clothes, sirs?”
Both of them made their blatting noises. “The temperature here will be survivable without adornment. Besides, slaves require no clothing, and we have nothing programmed to fit your odd form anyway.”
Shrugging, I decided I’d just have to go commando today. Lifting the collar, I got an idea. I put it around my neck, but I didn’t click it closed.
Walking out of the room in Xlur’s wake, I took a last glance over my shoulder at the window.
“That’s an amazing view, sir,” I said. “We’ve got nothing like it back in Province 921. What province is this, if you don’t mind my asking?”
He cast me another dismissive look. “Ignorance is your forte, human. This is Trantor—Mogwa Prime.”
Then, it all hit me. I should have known right off, but I hadn’t caught on for some reason.
I was on one of the Core Worlds! That realization was a shock, let me tell you.
What’s more, this was the fabled Mogwa Capital. The city-world that was at the very heart of our portion of the galaxy.
A chill ran through me. It was a true honor to be here. I had to wonder if any other human had ever slapped his bare feet on this floor before—I thought it was unlikely.
“Good old McGill,” I whispered to myself, “you crazy bastard, you made it all the way out to the Core Worlds! Hot damn…”
-20-
It may come as a surprise to learn that I’m a man who’s relatively at ease while naked. Some people might feel an urge to cover themselves with a hand, or walk funny, or something. But not old James McGill. Hell, back when I was a kid, my momma had a devil of a time keeping me dressed at all until I was seven or eight years old. There were many family tales of me streaking into rooms full of ladies playing bridge and whatnot.
So today I found myself marching among the Mogwa with my wang fully exposed, and that wasn’t really a problem for me. It didn’t seem to bother them much, either.
We walked for what felt like kilometers. Mogwa’s have six limbs, each of which is terminated by an odd-looking appendage that could operate either as a foot or a hand. Their six hands could all be used to manipulate objects or aid in locomotion. Either way, the Mogwa looked funny, like funky spiders with a wobbling step.
During that long walk, I let my tapper continue recording. I took vid shots of every random thing we passed. I figured intel was intel, and the people back home could sort the good clips from the bad later on.
The Core World was kind of tight-knit. Despite the massive size of their city, I got the feeling they were cramped for space.
“Hey, Chief Inspector? Just how many Mogwa are there on Mogwa Prime?”
He glanced back at me. “A telling question for a saboteur. But I will entertain it nonetheless. We are nearly three trillion strong on this world.”
“Holy shit…” I said, looking around in wonderment. “Then this city… it can’t be skin deep. It has to go down and down, deep into the crust.”
“The mantle is our limit,” he agreed. “We’ve been forced to immigrate to hospitable worlds recently, due to lack of space here at home.”
“Um…” I said,
thinking that over. “You mean you haven’t colonized a thousand planets already?”
“Heavens no! Leaving Mogwa Prime is a form of banishment for any of us. This is our home. We only truly enjoy ourselves here.”
That got me to thinking… if the Mogwa were contained so tightly on this single planet, well… killing them all would be a whole lot easier.
Suddenly, I began to understand the power of the bio-terminator I’d been chasing after. The book Floramel had transcribed verbatim from memory was a recipe for genocide against these people.
Before seeing Mogwa Prime, the feverish hunt for a poisonous formula had never seemed too rational to me. Sure, it would be a good way to kill a population, but I’d always assumed any ancient race would be spread far and wide across the stars.
But… what if that wasn’t true for the Mogwa? What if they were such stick-in-the-mud types they didn’t like living anywhere else? Like salmon that were only really happy in the river of their birth, these guys had always complained when they traveled.
They looked down their noses at everyone, calling us all kinds of names. And I recalled as well that the officials I had met were generally considered outcasts. Grand Admiral Sateekas, for instance, had said he was out of favor back home in the Mogwa courts. Maybe that was why he’d been sent so far from home to run a fleet in our far-flung province.
Chief Inspector Xlur was of the same sort. He hated Province 921, the very place he’d been assigned to rule.
“So…” I said aloud, “when they assigned you to be governor of 921, that made you into a sort of exile, didn’t it?”
Xlur halted. Slowly, he turned to face me.
Crap.
“Uh…” I said. “I hadn’t meant to say that out loud, Chief Inspector. Please disregard my rudeness.”
He studied me, looking me up and down. “I remember you now. You were a disruption back on Earth. A plague they didn’t know what to do with. That other being—the female Turov—she described you as such to me.”
