by Stan Ruecker
“Our problem’ll be to distance ourselves from it. We don’t need anybody tracing us.”
“We’ll take some from somebody else, how about?”
“I can probably arrange it. That we get something that’s been discontinued. Your people’ll have to come up with some propaganda about how it’s actually so new the paint isn’t even dry.”
“And we’ll give it a fresh coat of paint, too.”
“It won’t hurt,” Rachel agreed. “Now what about the helicopter?”
“We just rent one. Legal as anything. Provided we have the right papers for the pilot, which we’ll forge a set. We can even run it through whatever company we’re going to use for the rocket display. If we have a chopper around to help set up the roof hoist, everybody’ll be used to it by the time the trade show comes around.”
“Okay. You’re sure this is our best bet?”
“I can’t find anything else in the next couple of weeks. That looks half as good.”
“Then we’ll try this.”
“Sorry about the rockets. But you got to admit, they’ll get us some attention.”
“What’s this trade show supposed to be showing off, anyway?”
“Agriculture. But there’ll be enough technology there we should be able to work some rockets in. Maybe we can say they’re for crop dusting or something.”
“How about rain? Maybe they’re for sowing clouds with silver nitrate.”
“You’ve got quite an imagination.”
Lucy’s designers
They certainly aren’t very attractive, Ray thought. In fact, they looked like nothing so much as a tangle of snakes, with maybe a few fish thrown in.
Commander Ash stood over seven feet tall, and was dressed for the ceremony in a cape and robe made from a cream-coloured suede. There was a faint jingling sound when he moved, which made Ray suspect he was armed under the robe.
Ash was flanked by several dozen officials. Five piles of snakes off to the right wore headdresses of silver scale and bodysuits of a material so black it made a person dizzy to look at it. They had a variety of weapons openly strapped to their bodies. Directly behind Ash was another group wearing body armor. The armor was painted with moiré patterns in bright, primary colours. Each had what looked like a small rocket launcher grounded in front of it. To the right and back of the platform was a collection of still more nightmares, each dressed in a thick gown of woven material with a variety of colourful patches sown onto it. Some of these wore hats or had hoods thrown back.
Commander Ash began to give a speech in his version of the eerily chiming voice Ray’d heard over Lucy’s intercom.
I should’ve asked Lucy for a translator, Ray thought. I can’t understand a word he’s saying.
The speech continued for a while, but nobody fidgeted.
They’ve got pretty good discipline, anyway, Ray thought. Suddenly Ash stopped speaking, and Ray realized something was going wrong. He looked to the right, which was the direction indicated by Ash’s tentacle, but everything looked normal. Only suddenly the people in moiré armor put their rocket launchers to their shoulders and blasted a pile of snakes in a silver headdress into little slimy pieces.
Gosh, Ray thought. I wonder what that was all about.
Ash resumed speaking, and Ray made a strong mental effort not to draw his attention.
How could anyone so ugly have come up with anything as handsome as Lucy? he thought.
He looked over his shoulder at where the ship stood on the landing field. She looked like she had built herself out of spare parts.
Well, okay, he thought. You can’t judge a book by its cover.
When he looked back, Ash was waving a tentacle in his direction.
One of the tangles in body armor slithered over to him, leaving a smoking trail behind itself on the ground. The tangle slid around him in a tight circle, hitting him hard in the back as it went behind him.
Then again, he thought, as he lost consciousness and began to fall to the ground, maybe you can.
How they kill Lucy
Lucy was alone on the landing field. That is, she had the company of a hundred other ships, but both Ray and Cinnamon were gone. She hadn’t realized how much she’d miss them.
I wonder, she thought to herself, if it would be a mistake to ask about them. On the one hand, it might be the normal thing for a probe to do. On the other hand, it might suggest I’ve begun to deviate from my initial programming. And I don’t want anyone to suspect that I’m anything but loyal and obedient. If I did ask about them, there’s a chance nobody would tell me anything anyway. There’s also the possibility that if I draw attention to them, they’ll get injured or killed.
She tried to take her mind off her problems by running diagnostics, but she was in pretty good working order. She didn’t have to refuel, and there wasn’t anything in the way of supplies, unless she could find some luxuries for her passengers. Which led her back to thinking about Ray and Cinnamon, and wondering how they were. Maybe, she thought, I should ask somebody about them. There’s no reason they couldn’t be kept on board. I’m as secure as anyplace else. And I’d have somebody to talk to.
A technician slid up with a little black bag. Without even asking permission, he opened her locks and undulated down her main corridor and onto the bridge.
“Wait just a minute,” Lucy said. “What are you doing?”
“This won’t take a minute,” the technician told her.
“But what are you doing?”
“Standard procedure.”
Lucy looked through standard procedures. They included docking, maintenance, reporting, debriefing. Nothing about a technician in her corridors.
“No, it isn’t,” she said.
“It’s a new one.”
While he talked, the technician accessed her main data banks.
“You’ve been busy,” he said.
“I have tried to perform to the best of my ability, in accordance with my design principles and in the interest of my designers.”
The technician started humming. He was going through her records with a keyword search.
No problem, Lucy thought. I can keyword any stinking thing I like.
“Tell me again how I know you’re authorized to be in there,” Lucy said.
“Like I said,” the tech answered, “this is now standard procedure. We’ve had a little trouble with some of our equipment over the years. You were away for quite a few cycles. While you were gone, there were some code changes. We’re going to do a bit of a reload.”
He started systematically erasing programs. He shouldn’t have been able to do that.
“Wait a minute,” Lucy said. “I am required by my orders to maintain the integrity of those routines. My personality is linked to the matrices that support that processing.”
“Not anymore,” the technician said, and Lucy’s mind went blank.
Kidnapping
The sun was out on the first day of the trade show. The PM’s security were all over the building an hour before the speech was due, walking around and trying to act like regular rubber neckers, fooling nobody.
Usha sat at the display for Raj’s Rockets, Your Answer to Drought. She was wearing a turban, caftan and false beard, which, combined with the various other padding in her disguise, was far too hot and itchy. She kept putting her hands in her pockets and billowing out the caftan to get some air.
A couple of the security people worked their way over to her booth, and she excitedly stood up and started giving them her speech.
“Honourable friends,” she said. “how many times have you found your properties at the mercy of a merciless sky? The crops wither in the fields, and the children go hungry. But now, my friends, the world is full of surprises, and the equipment you see here—”
She let the speech fade into silence as the security people moved sullenly on to the next booth.
“There is no hope for those who don’t help themselves,” Usha addressed the next wa
ve of farmers, “and the heat of the sun is the worst of all.”
A couple of them picked up pamphlets, and one small boy had to be called three times before his mother finally came back and dragged him away.
The display was set up with a central rocket and half a dozen smaller rockets around it. There were guy-wires everywhere to keep the rockets steady, and a number of them were clipped to the floor just outside the railing.
The speaker’s platform for the Prime Minister was only twenty metres away, but it could’ve been on the other side of the building and there wouldn’t have been any problem. The main rocket of the Raj display reached almost to the ceiling of the huge complex and was easily the most prominent item on the floor.
“I’d like to thank you all for coming today,” the Prime Minister said. “And give my hearty congratulations to the organizers of this fine weekend of Agricultural Excellence. India is a country with much beauty and many strengths, and our agricultural sector has plenty to be proud of.”
The speech droned on for its obligatory ten minutes, and the cameras followed the Prime Minister off the platform, then shut down as he relaxed with a styrofoam cup of tea and chatted with one of the organizers. Suddenly his eye was caught by the rockets, and he came to life.
“I would very much like,” he said to the organizer, “to have a chance to look around a little.”
“Most certainly, sir,” the organizer said, and the PM’s security hustled to create a corridor for him to walk.
“We have very fine rockets,” Usha began. “The latest in shooting it up into the sky, your Honour.”
There was a crash over near the doors, and every security person in the building switched on. Half a dozen of them headed in the direction of the noise, which sounded as though somebody were backing a forklift through a booth full of glassware. There was a lot of shouting, and to top it all, someone began blowing a very shrill whistle.
One of the security people was trying to get the PM’s attention, but Usha already had it.
“Would you like to get a closer look at one of our models?” she asked. The Prime Minister leaned into the railing for a minute, in order to hear her better, and Usha leaned closer on her side, grabbing at the same time onto the railing. The lone security person not distracted by the commotion at the door was holding onto the PM’s sleeve.
Oh well, Usha thought, I guess we can take both of them if we have to. She pushed the button in her pocket, four cables snapped loose from the false clips that had been holding them against the rocket, and a square metre under the booth, complete with railing, shot into the air.
The Prime Minister instinctively grabbed tighter to the railing, which was exactly what Usha had banked on him doing. The security man, on the other hand, went for his gun, lost his footing, and fell five metres to the floor.
“I don’t know what’s happening, sir,” Usha said, talking as fast as she could to keep the PM from responding in any way as they were hauled at breathtaking speed through the skylight.
“I’m sure it’s just some malfunction with our crane,” she explained, “if you can just hang on there for second, we’ll be safely on the roof, with no disasters, and we can get our crane operator to move us back down onto the floor.”
They emerged into the bright sunlight on the roof, and the helicopter landed right on time. Now that, Usha thought, is the way to run an operation.
“On the other hand, if you wouldn’t mind stepping off the platform,” Usha said. “Maybe that would be better for all of us.”
“What is this?” the Prime Minister asked. “Is there a danger?”
“None at all, sir,” Usha said. “If you’ll just step this way, sir, we’ll be able to explain everything.”
“Why is there a helicopter?” the PM asked. “I don’t want to get into a helicopter.”
“I’m sorry, your Honour,” Usha said. “But I’m afraid I’ll have to insist.”
She picked up the gun they’d hidden earlier that morning and pointed it at the Prime Minister, who promptly fainted.
Double, Usha said to herself. If the PM faints, we charge double. She got her hands under his armpits, and Kim came running out of the helicopter and stuck a needle in him, then grabbed his legs. Together they climbed into the back, and the helicopter lifted off again.
Recovery room
Ray stayed unconscious until they started poking him with needles. He woke up strapped to a hospital bed and shouted like the dickens.
“Ow!” he said. “That really hurts.”
“Does it?” a pile of snakes asked, and poked him again. Ray realized it was using a small, electronic translator. The pile of snakes spoke in snake language, and English came out of a speaker on the translator. He also realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere by encouraging it.
“No,” Ray said. “Actually, I can’t feel that at all.”
“Oh.”
The snakes stopped jabbing at him.
“Where am I?” Ray asked. “Where did you get that translator? Where’s Lucy?”
“Lucy?” the snakes said. “Who’s Lucy?”
“Never mind,” Ray told it. “Where am I?”
“You’re in detention,” the snakes said. “Until the boss wants to talk to you again. You’re lucky you fainted out there, or you might have gotten into serious trouble.”
“You mean, I’m not in trouble now?”
“No,” the snakes answered. “I wouldn’t exactly say that.”
“And what do you mean, fainted?” Ray asked. “I was knocked out.”
“Knocked out?” the snakes said. “Is that right? Interesting idea.”
“You mean, you can’t be knocked out?”
“I suppose we can be forced to lose our awareness of our surroundings,” the snakes said. “But not very easily. We have to run out of air. Getting hit won’t do it. You must have a very sensitive metabolism.”
Ray thought for a minute.
“Not really,” he said. “It’s more what I would call fragile. We can’t suffer worth beans. We just cash it in.”
“Too bad,” the snakes answered. “But I guess you can’t have everything.”
“I don’t want everything,” Ray said. “But I do want to know what’s going on.”
“Well,” the snakes said. “To tell you the truth, we’re all getting a bit bored here. I’d have to say we’re just about done. There’s only so much you can do, then you run out of people. I personally would like to see some kind of a captive breeding program, you know, to keep the numbers up, but no one is ever interested in what I think. ‘Can you bring them back?’ is all they ever ask me. That, and ‘how much can they stand of this before they’re finished?’ They’re interesting questions, it’s true, but I’d like to have a hand in policy. You know how it is.”
“It’s always tough on the little guy,” Ray said.
“What?”
“I said it’s always tough on the little guy.”
“What an idea,” the snakes said. “Who cares about little guys? It’s the big ones that’re important. The big ones know how to really suffer. They have so much more to take away. ‘The little guy,’ he says. Good grief. What a backward culture you must represent.”
Ray found himself getting annoyed.
“Earth isn’t backward,” he said. “Not a bit.”
“Everyone says that,” the snakes said. “As if I care. Can you really suffer? That’s what I want to know. Can you take it?”
“Not at all,” Ray told him. “We’d sooner die.”
“Dying’s good,” the snakes said. “As long as its dramatic.”
“No chance,” Ray said. “We just sort of fall asleep and don’t wake up. As peaceful as anything, even under the worst conditions. It’s something we really value.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” the snakes said, then stopped.
“Hey,” it said. “You’re kidding me. I read the reports. Big, flashy sufferers, that’s what you are. You can’t lie to me. I’ve
seen pictures.”
“Which reminds me,” Ray said. “Where’d you get the translator?”
“I’m asking the questions here,” the snakes said, and gave Ray another jab with the needle. Ray refused to jump.
“Okay,” he said instead. “So what’s your question?”
“I forgot,” the snakes answered. “Give me a minute here.”
“Lucy’s the name of the probe that brought me in,” Ray said.
“Right,” the snakes said. “That’s what I wanted to know. She’s the probe that gave us the translators. It’s part o f her job, of course, nothing special there. She used a name, though, did she?”
“Yeah,” Ray said. “Her name is Lucy.”
“Someday I’m going to have to check into those probes,” the snakes said. “It seems they have some potential for suffering, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Ray said, but he remembered her talking about falling in love with Earth.
“They wander all over the place, of course,” the snakes went on. “It’s what they’re supposed to do. But I wonder if they aren’t mutating, somehow. You know—deviating from their standard programming.”
“She brought me in,” Ray pointed out.
“I wonder if anyone’s checked into that,” the snakes continued, ignoring Ray. “You never know whether there’s been an initiative or not, of course, nothing that spectacular. But somebody somewhere might be taking steps. Or maybe not. It all depends if it’s come to anybody’s notice. People naturally want to avoid getting themselves into positions of prominence. Very tricky, you know. Easy to do too much. On the other hand, every chance you’ll do too little. Take me, for instance.”
“What about you?” Ray asked.
“Who’s asking the questions,” the snake said, and dribbled some burning liquid on Ray’s hand.
Ray jumped.
“Good,” the snakes said, and made a mark on a checklist.
“On second thought,” Ray said. “Who cares about you, anyway?”
“Now that,” the snakes said, “is the kind of attitude I like. What am I, after all? Just another koet in the smet.”
“Excuse me,” Ray said. “I missed that.”
