by Stan Ruecker
“Of course I can,” Ray said. “We do it all the time.”
“Well, it isn’t just your race,” Lucy said. “It’s not like I’m crazy about human beings or something.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s the whole planet,” Lucy said. “The mad chaos of it. The blatant sexual displays of your plants and animals. The insane variety of your insects. The sounds under the ocean. Blizzards. How could I begin to describe the loveliness? In the three weeks I spent watching your planet, I must have wasted half my time just looking at the clouds going by.”
“Wait a minute!” Ray shouted. “Did you just say three weeks? Three weeks, Lucy? Are you trying to tell me that you only spent three weeks on Earth? That you fell in love with an entire planet in 21 days?” Ray was breathless.
“Of course,” Lucy said. “How long do you think it takes?”
Cinnamon padded in from the mess and sat in the doorway, clearly thinking it was time for someone to think about making some supper. Ray walked over, and she licked his hand.
“You fell in love with the planet you were scouting.”
“I did.” She sounded glum.
“Which means that you don’t want to have it invaded.”
“That’s true.”
“Which means you need to keep it from being invaded.”
“Also true.”
“So I’m your partner?”
“I want you to be my partner, Ray.”
Kim’s schedule
There was going to be a problem getting the information Rachel wanted. Kim looked over her short list of available agents. They were running three operations already, which meant almost everyone was booked. She could take a slice of Martin, who was tech, and three-quarters of Kelly, who could take anything provided there were clear instructions and no major emergencies, but it didn’t look like she would be able to use Ann at all, who could do everything and adapt herself when she needed to. It just figured.
Kim called up a spreadsheet and started mapping it out. It might work if she took over the reporting personally, which would be a one-thirds commitment for her, and for the first phase she would be able to get away with having Martin install the surveillance and Kelly maintain it. Maybe she could hire a part-timer to review the tapes. In terms of the actual interviewing, she didn’t think there was anyone to delegate it to, which meant another third-time for her. This was going to get expensive, but Rachel had never balked about price, that was one good thing about her.
Kim remembered their last operation, a peripheral job for a bigger move on a money-laundering setup that RISK wanted to appropriate. She and Rachel had gone in personally to set the electronics to blow out the side of an office tower, and they’d been caught by a nightscanner that had, against everyone’s expectation, some serious armaments. It was an anomaly, a once-only investment for the launderers, who usually relied on human security. Someone had made a mistake in not flagging that purchase, and the thing had chewed a piece out of Kim’s leg with a fragmentation grenade that set off the explosion prematurely. The diversion worked, it was true, but Kim had been able to predict changes in the weather ever since, by paying attention to when her leg ached.
She turned back to her spreadsheet, remembering at the last minute that Usha was off the critical path by the end of the month. So there was another half-time she could pull in, if she needed to. Maybe it could be pulled together after all.
White peacocks
Their captors were little white peacocks with three heads. The middle head was normal for a peacock, right down to its funny crest, while the other two looked more like snake heads. Several of them were wearing hats on the snake heads, and one had something that looked like a digital watch strapped around its neck. The crowd was susurrating.
Ray waited in the airlock door until the noise died down, then took a few hesitant steps into the station.
There were enough peacocks that Ray didn’t count them. Many of them carried a glass marble in the left snake-mouth. They kept the glass marbles aimed at Ray.
“Hello,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” one of the peacocks said.
“I have been taken—” he started, then stopped.
“I am in the—” he tried again.
I wish I’d planned this a little, he thought. Why don’t you plan these things better?
He looked at the ceiling, which was high enough that it made him dizzy. He looked the lead peacock in the left eye of its middle head, which was the one it had turned inquisitorially on him.
“I am travelling,” he said, “for my own pleasure. With a friend.”
“Come with us, please,” the peacock said, and they all walked through a door that opened itself to let them pass.
“Where are we going?” Ray asked.
“You’re under arrest,” the peacock answered.
“Under what charge?”
“Charge?” the peacock asked. “What do you mean by that?”
“Why am I under arrest?” Ray tried.
“Because you’re a pirate, of course,” the peacock answered.
“Ah,” Ray said. “I see. Well, then it should be fairly straightforward to clear the whole thing up, because, as I say, I am not travelling for, er, business, at all.”
“You’re trying to say you aren’t a pirate?”
“No,” Ray said. “Or rather, yes. Not a pirate.”
“Then what are you doing in our territory without a right of transit?”
“What’s a right of transit?” Ray asked.
“If you don’t have one,” the peacock explained, “you’re a pirate. That’s the definition of piracy, here, and everywhere.”
I guess that’s true, Ray thought. He had to admit he’d never thought much about it before.
The floor was irregular, so rough in spots that Ray stumbled when he looked up at a giant picture on one of the walls. It must have been a picture with some significance, Ray guessed, since the corridor widened and the ceiling rose in order to accommodate it.
The picture was of several white peacocks involved in some way or other with a gigantic banyan tree. One of them had its head stuck right through a hole in one of the trunks. Several others were sitting precariously on branches that looked too thin to hold them. One was disappearing into a tunnel that gaped past a monstrous root.
“Infidel,” his captor roared. “Don’t defame our sacredness with the unworthiness of your eyes.”
“Sorry,” Ray said. “I didn’t know.”
“There’s much you don’t know,” the peacock said. “So much, in fact, that I don’t know if it’ll be worth our while even talking to you.”
“You mean I won’t get a trial?” Ray asked.
“What’s a trial?”
“You can’t convict me without a trial,” Ray said. “It isn’t civilized.”
“You mean we can’t take you prisoner without taking the trouble to educate you properly,” the peacock said. “You’re right, of course. I wouldn’t have thought a pirate would know so much about basic rights. But of course you’ll have met other pirates, and they’ll have told you about our generosity. It’s my opinion that we’ve been too soft, but nobody listens to what I say.”
“I don’t think education is exactly what I was talking about,” Ray said. “What I was interested in was more along the line of civil rights.”
“What an odd idea,” the peacock said. “How can you have any rights when you don’t even understand the most basic principles of religious thought?”
“Religious thought?” Ray said.
“Of course,” the peacock told him. “Religion is what separates the citizen from the barbarian. Everybody knows that.”
“I see,” Ray said. “So your plan is to teach me your religion.”
The peacock let out a screech.
“Blasphemer,” it said.
“Now what?” Ray asked.
“No one can know anything about religion itself,” the peac
ock said. “All any mortal can hope for is to know the correct religious thought. We’re going to teach you, God willing, how to think.”
“I already know how to think, thanks,” Ray said.
“I don’t know why I bother,” the peacock said. “It’s like talking to an animal. How can you know anything about thinking when you haven’t heard the glorious revelation?”
“Ah,” Ray said. “You’ve got me there.”
“These infidels,” the peacock said, more or less addressing nobody. “They’re so stupid.”
They’d come to an area with three peacocks running laps in front of it.
“Here is your re-education area,” the captor explained to Ray. “These honourables will be your beadles.”
“Ah,” Ray said, and watched them go around.
“I have the prisoner,” his captor reported. “One of the recent pirates. It insists on its rights.”
“Wait a minute,” Ray said. “I didn’t really mean to insist on anything. It was more in the nature of a question, if you follow me.”
“So it’ll require reprogramming,” the peacock continued unperturbed. “If possible. I have no idea whether the revelation can even be communicated to one of these.”
Two of the running peacocks cut themselves out of the loop and began running back and forth behind Ray. The effect was to herd him toward a door. Ray went, and the door opened in front of him.
Education
Ray figured they wouldn’t let him keep the knapsack, but after they pointed a couple of orchids at it they left it with him. He was required to produce Lucy’s drone, however, which they summarily stunned and stuffed into what looked like an old shoebox. And they kept the shoebox. So much for company, Ray thought. It barely even made it out of my pocket.
Next they led Ray down a corridor and into a room that looked like a children’s play area. It had giant colourful pipes, and the walls were covered with mesh.
“Wait here please,” the guard said, and left Ray standing next to a set of five parallel bars.
“Wait a minute,” he said, but the guard was already gone back through the wall. Ray decided to follow, but the door wouldn’t open.
Okay, he said to himself. I can think of something. I’m not at a total loss, here. He didn’t have very long to think, however, before another pair of peacocks entered the room. They came from opposite ends, and he heard them before he could see them. They were both talking simultaneously. The feet of the one on the left clumped as it walked. The one on the right sounded like it was dragging something. Ray looked back and forth, but couldn’t see anything.
“Blessed is the revelation,” one of the peacocks said.
“The vision is the truth,” the other said.
Suddenly the one on the left appeared, standing in the open end of one of the plastic pipes. It was wearing huge shoes, like snowshoes made of silver. Then the other one showed up, in the mouth of a different pipe. It was wearing wheels on its feet, like oversize rollerskates.
“Ah,” the one on wheels said. “This is the pirate.”
“Not so,” said the one in snowshoes. “This is the novice.”
“There’s been no revelation,” the wheeled peacock pointed out.
“There will be,” snowshoes said. “It’s just a matter of time.”
“His species is unknown,” wheels answered, “and may not be sufficiently advanced.”
“The revelation is for all creatures,” snowshoes pointed out. “No matter how humble. If they use language, they can accept truth.”
“Language is not enough,” wheels said. “Unless there is also soul.”
“Soul is not enough,” snowshoes responded, “without the heart that responds.”
“Hey,” Ray said. “What’s going on?”
“It has audacity,” wheels said. “That is not good.”
“Not good,” snowshoes echoed, stamping its feet to emphasize its agreement. “But it is, after all, only a pirate. There’s been no revelation.”
“Pirate,” wheels addressed Ray. “What gives you the right to present yourself as novice to this august revelation, when others are not so permitted?”
“I told the person who arrested me,” Ray said. “That I deserve a trial.”
The peacocks looked at one another.
“There can be no trial—” wheels said.
“—without an adequate grounding in the revelation,” snowshoes finished. “But this doesn’t answer my question, pirate. In what way are you worthy?”
“Your law says I have the right,” Ray tried. “To be educated.”
“You will learn to think,” snowshoes told him. “It may not be easy.”
“On the other hand,” wheels said. “Many respond quickly. It all depends on the nature of the novice.”
“Are you a quick learner?” snowshoes asked Ray. “Do you respond to the changes around you?”
“I think so,” Ray said, and thought about it against his better judgment. “Yes,” he said. “I’d say I learn quickly enough.”
“Bad,” both peacocks responded.
“Why bad?” Ray asked.
“The revelation is not for those of an inconstant disposition,” snowshoes explained. “To know the truth, it is necessary to hold to the truth.”
“Good grief,” Ray said. “What happens if I decide I don’t want to be educated after all?”
“Inconstant of purpose,” snowshoes shrieked. “Just as I feared.”
Wheels did a little grumbling pirouette.
“Not firm,” it said, “is not necessarily infirm.”
“Listen,” Ray said. “I think this whole thing is a mistake. I don’t really want your religion. I just want to go back to my ship. I want you to let us go. We aren’t pirates. If we need a right of transit, then you should issue one to us.”
“Worse and worse,” snowshoes moaned. “So much presumption.”
“We will take a recess,” wheels announced. “To reconsider.”
The two of them clattered and rumbled back up their pipes, and the guards ran in to herd Ray out.
Purge
Kevin couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Hey, Funk,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Come here a minute.”
Steve Eutenier shuffled up, one shirt-tail hanging out in back.
“What?” he asked.
“Did you get this e-mail?”
“Which e-mail?”
“This one here.”
Kevin swivelled the display for his friend to see.
“Oh, yeah,” Steve said, and scratched himself. “I got that. Everybody did.”
“They’re going to scrub the system,” Kevin said. “We’re doing a wipe right back to before that probe showed up.”
“You mean the anomaly.”
“Whatever. What about the accounting department? They’re going to have a fit. None of their records are going to be right anymore.”
“It come from the top. You can’t argue with the big cheese.”
“What did Karen say?”
“I don’t think she said anything. Weren’t you at the meeting?”
“No. I was busy. Besides, they never say anything important.”
“They did this time,” Steve yawned. “If you think this is important.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like this. It’s just crazy. I’m going to talk to Karen.”
“Whatever you say,” Steve said, and wandered away.
Kevin took a minute to get his ideas together, then realized there were more than he could keep in his head, so he wrote up a list:
1. if there was no probe, then there can’t be an alien virus
2. but assuming there was a probe, we don’t know it is a virus
3. even if it is a virus, we don’t know it’s dangerous
4. no matter what it is, I already cleaned it out.
He kept the paper in his hand and went straight to Karen’s office.
“Hi, Kevin,” Karen said cheerfully. “H
ow’s it hanging?”
“What’s this about a system purge?”
“Beats me. We got the news this morning at the staff meeting. Where were you, by the way?”
“I slept through my alarm clock,” he said, glancing down at his list.
“Besides,” she continued, “I figured you’d know more about it than anybody. This is your pet project, isn’t it?”
“It’s the first I heard of it. I think it’s nuts.”
“You did say we had this invasive thing in our systems, right? This alien virus of yours.”
“I never said it was a virus,” Kevin said, trying to remember if he’d ever said it that way or not. “But even if I did, that isn’t necessarily what it is. And besides,” he said, remembering item one on his list, “how can it be an alien virus if the whole space probe was just a glitch in the video system?”
“The anomaly thing? Yeah, well, whatever. I suppose you could argue that it glitched right through systems. In fact I think there was something about that in the memo, wasn’t there?”
“If that were the case,” Kevin said, forgetting the list altogether, “then who can say the archive wasn’t glitched, same as everything else?”
“It’s never been on the system. Not since the probe—I mean, the anomaly—was here. Nothing could’ve gotten into the archive.”
“But you’re wiping everything? It’s going to take weeks to get the system back out of archive, and you’ll lose every transaction since then.”
“Don’t I know it. That’s why everybody’s on instant overtime from now until it’s done.”
“What!”
“Yeah. I guess you never got down to that memo, huh? Looks like your pet project’s going to have to go on hold. If they even let you keep a working copy, which I doubt they will. You’re probably going to have submit all your personal electronics to a scrub.”
“They can’t do that,” Kevin said. But he knew they could.
“They’re planning to do body searches. Which I personally don’t think are necessary, but that’s what they’re saying. Everybody in or out of ops is going to get searched. Daily.”
