by Stan Ruecker
Cinnamon gave a low moan.
“Okay,” Ray said. “So transmission isn’t a good idea. How about if we try to arrange some kind of signal that couldn’t be intercepted? I could go up on the roof, for instance, and throw a stone at her. Surely that would get her attention.”
Cinnamon lied flat on the floor.
“You’re saying they might see me,” Ray said. “And you’ve got a point there. There’s also the problem that she might not think to look for where the stone came from. Or having looked, might not spot me. There isn’t a lot of communication value in a stone.”
“So here’s what we’ll do,” Ray said, and edged up to one of the windows to peek out onto the landing field.
Unfortunately, an alien guard looked back at him from the other side.
“Uh oh,” Ray said, “I think we’ve been spotted.”
An alarm went off. Ray and Cinnamon headed deeper into the warehouse. Behind them, the big bay doors crashed open to reveal a team of searchers.
“I hope those survivors got away,” Ray said, hunkering down behind a crate. Cinnamon stood beside him, shivering with nerves. Ray sneaked another look, and saw the aliens spreading out to search the warehouse.
“Maybe if we could get inside one of these boxes,” Ray said. “Then we’d be okay, provided they don’t have any infrared equipment.”
“Assuming they don’t see infrared naturally,” he added.
Suddenly the siren cut off. Ray looked around the corner of the crate again, and there was Hisssttnnn , naked as the day he was born, walking in front of the alien searchers. One of the aliens said something loud enough for the translator to pick it up.
“It’s just that crazy Lhhhnnn,” Ray’s translator said.
“Quiet,” Ray told it.
“Never mind,” it continued, changing its volume to a whisper. “Nobody cares about him. My question is, where’s that Earthling?”
“Nobody cares about the Earthling, either.”
“But I saw it,” the translator insisted. Ray began to wish the thing had more than one voice. You’d think with technology this advanced, he thought, they’d’ve included a variety of voices.
“One of these days I’m going to shoot that guy,” somebody mumbled, and Ray wondered if the speaker meant the other guard or Hisssttnnn .
“Let’s get out of here,” the translator whispered. “We’re pulling out of here any day now. We got to get our stuff gathered up,”
“Good idea,” the translator whispered to itself.
The big bay door closed again with a crash. The warehouse was silent.
“That was close,” Ray said to Cinnamon.
“Do you always talk to your dog?” Hisssttnnn asked Ray, who lost ten years off his life.
“Where did you come from?” he demanded.
“I was saving your butt,” Hisssttnnn answered. “You aren’t very good at this sneaking around, are you?” He was pulling his clothes back on.
“What do you mean?” Ray said. “I was doing okay.”
“I only left you here, what, half an hour ago? And next thing I know, they’re calling out the troops. I wouldn’t call that grade A skulking.”
“I guess I looked out the window at the wrong moment,” Ray admitted. “But it was just bad luck.”
“Bad luck I know about,” Hisssttnnn said, fully dressed now. “What did you think you were doing?’
“I was trying to figure out how to get in touch with my probe.”
“You mean their probe.”
“She was good to me,” Ray said. “I think she’s on my side.”
“Whatever you say,” Hisssttnnn said. “I still think I’d give her a miss, if I were you.”
“She’s my only chance,” Ray said.
“It’s nice to have a chance left,” Hisssttnnn agreed. “So why don’t you just go out and talk to her?”
“They’d see me.”
“I don’t think so,” Hisssttnnn said, looking out the window that had started Ray’s problems. “Everybody’s gone back to the barracks.”
“Okay,” Ray said. “I’ll go. Would you mind keeping an eye on Cinnamon for me?”
“No problem,” Hisssttnnn said. “Is there anything I need to know about her? Is she dangerous?”
“Cinnamon?” Ray said. “No. She isn’t dangerous.”
“She kind of looks dangerous,” Hisssttnnn said. “She’s got such big teeth.”
“Her ancestors were dangerous,” Ray told him. “But we’ve had them domesticated for so long now that most of the danger’s been bred out of them.”
“Imagine that,” Hisssttnnn said. “You’re telling me you actually bred these animals to be less dangerous?”
Ray realized it was more complicated than that.
“Some of them,” he said. “There are others that were allowed to stay pretty mean. They use them for guard dogs and so on.”
“These guys would never have anything like that,” Hisssttnnn said. “They enjoy it too much themselves to share it with anybody else, much less an animal.”
“They aren’t very friendly, are they?” Ray said.
“Rrachnn,” Hisssttnnn said. “Nothing but Rrachnn.”
“What was that?” Ray said.
“Rrachnn,” Hisssttnnn said. “They’re these little guys that eat everything. They come all at once, millions of them.”
“Locusts,” Ray translated.
Rachel’s decision
Rachel sat in bed, under her reading light. It was three-thirty in the morning, but she couldn’t get to sleep. She had to decide what to do with the audio tape. As far as she could tell, she had three options. She could confront Ted Jones directly, but there was no guarantee he wouldn’t take immediate action against her. She could use her new information against him somehow, but there was no question it would have to be a convoluted process.
Or she could just snitch.
She remembered an episode from her childhood, her friend Peter going to his father to tell on his brother Mike.
“Mike said poop,” Peter told his dad.
Saying poop was verboten in their house.
“Who else said poop?” his dad asked.
Rachel had watched her friend’s face go scarlet. Then he covered his mouth with both hands.
Her father’s friend had summarized the lesson: “think,” he said, “before you fink.”
Rachel got a light pen and pad out of the drawer and told the computer to project her work onto the wall in front of her.
Her three choices were: confront, fight, snitch. She wrote them in a column under the heading “choices.”
Confrontation, at least on the first pass, seemed out of the question. For one thing, Ted Jones had far too much power for a lone woman to be effective. His choices ranged from ending her career to curtailing her freedom to ordering her death, on any scale from a professional assassination to a thermonuclear strike against whatever city she was in. For another thing, what would be the advantage to confronting him?
She started a second column, called “motive” beside the first.
She had to decide what outcome she’d prefer. Confrontation was probably best for blackmail. Rachel thought of Kim, with her elaborate systems for surveillance and data collection. If Kim could run a career like that without settling down as a blackmailer, it’d be a shame for anyone else to sink to it. And there was the problem of Ted’s resources as a mark. Rachel had no way to estimate either the extent of Ted’s income or his personal fortune, if any. She also didn’t know enough about his personality profile to make a good decision about whether he’d pay. So not only was there the distasteful aspect of blackmail as a profession, but there were also the practical problems of doing it successfully.
So what could be the goal of confrontation other than blackmail? To get him to quit whatever he was doing, of course. She wrote the word “prevention” under “blackmail” in the “motive” column.
The problem with using a confrontation as a
means of stopping him is that she couldn’t figure out how.
So I go to him, she thought, and I say, “Ted, I know about the aliens, and I want you to stop before I have to stop you.” Then he says “Go ahead and tell everyone you know. Say to them ‘Ted Jones talks to space aliens.’ Play them your tape recording. See how far that gets you.”
She had to admit he had a point. She moved to “fight.” There were more ways to fight him than confrontation. She could attempt to undermine his authority by arranging for some of his projects to fail. It was complicated, but possible, assuming Ted Jones took personal responsibility for the success of his initiatives. Which he didn’t. Rachel chewed on the end of her pen.
So if she couldn’t arrange to end his career, could she curtail his freedom somehow? Kidnapping the Prime Minister of India hadn’t been that tough. Kidnapping Ted Jones, on the other hand, meant going up against teams as competent and efficient as the ones she used in her own work. It meant going up against people like Kim. She just didn’t have the resources.
Killing him presented the same problems. It would be possible if she could locate a fanatic—you could always trade a life for a life, provided the fanatic wasn’t rendered useless by the nature of their obsession. Jones was not, however, a very public man. It would be hard to find somebody already convinced Jones needed killing, which meant having to convince somebody.
Snitching, on the other hand, might gain her allies powerful enough to tackle Jones directly. It began to seem, in spite of her childhood friend, like the most attractive option. If only she could find someone with enough power, all her problems with stopping Jones by ending his career, curtailing his freedom, or killing him could all be set aside.
If she decided in favour of snitching, there were two or three people in the U.S. government she could go to, but they were, after all, only American. Granted, they had ties to various governments around the world, and they had their own numbered Swiss accounts and so on, but it wasn’t like they were international powers.
So why not go to the top?
She could take her information to the president of the RISK corporation.
There would also be the problem of access, which wasn’t insignificant. But for the woman who had arranged for the kidnapping of the prime minister of a nation of 2 billion people, getting ten minutes with the president of a multinational shouldn’t be out of the question.
She called up her computer and made the notes for a few calls. Her problem was to find somebody positioned correctly—both close enough to the president to arrange a meeting, yet familiar enough with Rachel to know she wasn’t a threat.
A nightmare reunion
Ray worked his way out the door and carefully across the landing field. Most of the vehicles didn’t look like spaceships: they were just jets. But over near one of the hangars was a familiar collection of spare parts. Ray crept past a large machine that might have been a truck with too many wheels, and ran out to one of Lucy’s airlocks.
“Lucy,” he shouted, banging with his hand on the airlock door. “Lucy. It’s me, Ray!”
An alarm sounded from somewhere inside the ship, and a light flashed in his face from over the door.
“Stop where you are,” Lucy’s original, mechanical voice said. “You are under arrest.”
“Lucy,” Ray said. “What happened?”
“You have been identified. Stand where you are.”
“Lucy,” Ray said, “cut the kidding. Let me in. This is Ray, here.”
“This unit is not authorized to permit intrusion. Security personnel are on the way.”
“But Lucy,” Ray said.
“This is reconnaissance unit 75389. Stand where you are.”
The last command was in response to Ray tensing for a final run back into the obscurity of the airfield and its many buildings. A servo whined in the side of the ship, and what was clearly the muzzle of a weapon emerged.
Ray stayed put.
Something’s happened, he said to himself. She didn’t just forget about me overnight. They’ve done something to her.
“Alien ship,” Ray said, “what’s happened to you?”
“Your question has been logged,” Lucy said, “although it makes no sense. Are you raving, human specimen?”
“My name’s Ray,” Ray said. “You can call me Ray. And no, I’m as sane as—” He stopped. “I’m as sane as anyone,” he concluded. “But something’s happened to you.”
“I am fully functional,” Lucy announced, “and preparing for debarkation. And I am familiar with your name, human specimen. There is no need for an introduction.”
“Then why are you doing this, Lucy?” Ray asked. “I thought you were on my side.”
“You are mistaken,” the probe answered. “My directives would not allow me to consort with a specimen, although humane treatment is permitted.”
We were partners, Ray thought, and they’ve wiped your brain. He felt hopeless for the first time.
“Hisssttnnn was right,” he said.
“Identify your referent,” the ship said.
“Nobody important,” Ray said bitterly. “Just another one of your victims.”
It wasn’t very long before some guards showed up, including the one he and Cinnamon had jumped. Surprisingly, they took Ray back to his cell without even hitting him.
What happens to Hisssttnnn and Cinnamon
Cinnamon and Hisssttnnn sat in the warehouse and waited for Ray to come back.
“So you’re a dog,” Hisssttnnn said by way of making conversation, but since Ray had the translator, it made less sense than usual to Cinnamon. “I kind of like you,” the alien persevered. “We didn’t have any animals around us for company.”
Cinnamon thumped her tail speculatively on the ground and panted a bit in a friendly way. Hisssttnnn stepped back cautiously.
“What does that mean?” he asked. “Does it mean that you’re friendly, or that you’re upset?”
Cinnamon settled down on her front paws and kept on panting.
“Friendly,” Hisssttnnn decided, and relaxed again. “You know, there was a time I thought I’d never see another friendly face. And suddenly there’s two of you. It’s been nice meeting you two, even if it is the end of the world.”
Cinnamon wagged her tail.
“What do you like?” Hisssttnnn wondered out loud. “Do you like being touched? I seem to remember your friend stroking you.”
The alien bent cautiously down, all his tendrils waving with excitement, and put his hand on Cinnamon’s shoulder.
“Your fur is soft,” Hisssttnnn said. “Almost as soft as mine.”
He spent a few minutes petting the dog. Then she rolled over, and he discovered she liked her belly scratched.
“I wish we’d invented pets,” he said wistfully. “Not that it would’ve mattered any, I guess.”
He looked up and actually walked over to peer around a stake of crates.
“There’s nobody here,” he said. “Just us.”
As if catching his mood, Cinnamon whined a little.
“I wonder when your friend’s coming back,” the alien said. “We should’ve figured out some way of us knowing if he got through to her or not. Although I have to say I think it’s dangerous to deal with these people in any fashion.”
Hisssttnnn looked around the warehouse again, to make sure they weren’t going to get caught.
“Why don’t we go up,” he said, “and see if we can’t spot them? There’s a way I know that’ll get us onto the roof. Maybe we can see something from there.”
Cinnamon gave the alien a quizzical look.
“Come on,” Hisssttnnn said, and started walking away. When he turned to look back, Cinnamon was still sitting.
“Come on,” the alien tried again. “I want to go see if we can’t see your friend from here. Ray.”
Cinnamon suddenly got up and trotted over to the alien.
“Okay,” he said, “it’s over this way.”
The tw
o of them walked over to a ladder that reached up the wall and through a trapdoor in the ceiling.
“This isn’t going to work, is it?” Hisssttnnn asked. “I mean, you can’t get up here, can you?”
Cinnamon just looked at him.
“How heavy are you?” the alien said. “Maybe I can carry you up somehow.”
He reached down and gathered the dog up in his huge arms.
“You aren’t heavy at all,” he said, and Cinnamon gave him a tentative lick or two.
“Be careful,” he warned, laughing for the first time he could remember. “We don’t want to fall.”
Hisssttnnn freed up an arm to hold onto the rungs, and they went up the ladder and onto the roof.
“We have to stay low,” he warned Cinnamon, putting her down, “or else they might catch us.”
The alien bent almost double and worked his way over to the edge of the roof. The dog was already on all fours.
“Look,” Hisssttnnn said. “They’ve caught your friend.”
Ray was clearly being led away by a couple of piles of snakes, but Cinnamon couldn’t see over the parapet.
“Now what are we going to do?” Hisssttnnn said. “I don’t even know what you eat. I guess we could try to get ourselves—”
He stopped abruptly, because in turning around he’d come face to face with two piles of snakes.
“Stop,” they told him. “We’ve got you covered.”
“Hey,” he said, “you boys look like you could use a song.”
Hisssttnnn immediately started to sing and do a little Lhhhnnn soft shoe.
“Let him go,” one of the guards said. “He’s just crazy. But we’re supposed to catch the animal.”
Cinnamon was crouched over, waiting her moment. When one of the piles of snakes made a grab for her, she bit the tentacle and ran straight past him and crashed against the other one.
“Ow,” the bitten one said, and Hisssttnnn jumped him from behind. Unfortunately, his instinctive idea in grappling the pile of snakes was to fan one hand across the tendrils the alien didn’t have. This was a minor wrestling maneuver among the Lhhhnnn, comparable to a human being pushing their thumbs behind another person’s ears—painful, but not debilitating. It had no effect on the pile of snakes, who had no tendrils, and responded by swatting the Lhhhnnn on the side of the head. Again unfortunately, such a swat would’ve had little effect on a pile of snakes, but was almost enough to kill poor Hisssttnnn.
