Around a starship crew of Demmies, the human advisor can feel free to act “prudently wise,” since this is true to the image they have of us.
But never display outright fear. They find it upsetting. And we don’t want them upset.
“Break out the hose!” Captain Olm commanded, rubbing his hands. “Tell Guts and Nuts to meet us at the spigot. Come on, Doc. We're going down!”
****
Demmies love nicknames. They have one for the human race, often calling us “the Ancient Ones.”
From their point of view, it’s obvious. Not only do we live much longer as individuals, with lifespans of ninety or more Earth years, but from the Demmie perspective our people have been roaming the galaxy since time immemorial.
Well, after all, most member-races of the Federated Alliance learned starflight from us… as Demmies did, when we contacted their world fifty-eight years after our first starships departed the solar system.
That's how much longer we roamed the star lanes. Fifty-eight years. And for this they deferentially call us the Ancient Ones.
Sure. Why not? The first rule to remember - a rule even more important than the Choice Imperative - is to let Dems have their way.
****
Alliance spacecraft look strange to the uninitiated.
Till recently, most starfaring races traveled in efficient, globelike vessels, with small struts symmetrically arranged for the hyperdrive anchors. Travel to and from a planetary surface took place via orbital elevator at advanced worlds, or else by sensible little shuttles.
Like any prudent person, I'd be far happier traveling that way, but I try to hide the fact. Demmies cannot imagine why everyone doesn't love slurry transport as much as they do. So you can expect it to become the principal short-range system near all Alliance worlds.
It's not so bad, after the first hundred or so times. Trust me. You can get used to anything.
As a Demmie-designed exploration ship, the Clever Gamble looks like nothing else in the known universe. There are typically garish Dem-style drive struts, looking like frosting swirls on some psychotic baker’s confection. These are linked to a surprisingly efficient and sensible engineering pod, which then clashes with a habitation module resembling some fairy-tale castle straight out of Hans Christian Andersen.
Then there is the Reel.
The Reel is a gigantic, protruding disk that takes up half the mass and volume of the ship, all in order to lug a prodigious, unbelievable hose all over the galaxy, frightening comets and intimidating the natives wherever we go. This conduit was already half-deployed by the time the ship's artificer and healer met us in the slurry room. Through the viewer, we could see a tapering line descend toward the planet's surface, homing in on a selected landing site.
The captain hopped about, full of ebullient energy. For the record, I reminded him that, contrary to explicit rules and common sense, the descent party once again consisted of the ship's top four officers, while a fully trained xenology team waited on standby, just three decks below.
“Are you kidding?” he replied. “I served on one of those teams, long time ago. Boringest time I ever had.”
“But the thrill of contacting alien-”
“What contact? All's we did was sit around while the top brass went down to all the new planets, and did all the fighting and peacemaking and screwing. Well it's my turn now. Let 'em stew like I did!” He whirled to the reel operator. “Hose almost ready?”
“Aye sir. The Nozzle end has been inserted behind some shrubs in what looks like a park in their biggest city.”
I sighed. This was not an approach I would have chosen. But most of the time you just have to go with the flow. It really is implacable. And things often turn out all right in the end. Surprisingly often.
Olm rubbed his hands. “Good. Then let's see what's down there!”
Resignedly, I followed my leader into the dissolving room.
At this point I should introduce Guts and Nuts.
Those are not their formal names, of course. But, as a Demmie would say, who cares? On an Alliance ship, you quickly learn to go by whatever moniker the captain chooses.
Commander-Healer Paolim-or “Guts”-is the ship's surgeon, an older Demmie and, I might add, an exceptionally reasonable fellow.
It is always important to remember that both humans and Dems produce individuals along a wide spectrum of personality types, and that the races do overlap! While some Earthling men and women can be as flighty and impulsive as a Demmie adolescent, the occasional Demmie can, in turn, seem mature, patient, reflective.
On the other hand, let me warn you right now-never get so used to such a one that you take it for granted! I recall one time, on Sepsis 69, when this same reasonable old healer actually tried to persuade a mega-thunder ameboid to stop in mid-charge for a group photo…
But we'll save that story for another time.
Commander-Artificer Nomlin-or “Nuts”-is the ship’s chief engineering officer. A female Demmie, she dislikes the slang term, “fem-dem,” and I recommend against ever using it. Nuts is brilliant, innovative, stunningly skilled with her hands, mercurial, and utterly fixated on making life miserable for me, for reasons I’d rather not go into. She nodded to the captain and the doctor, then curtly at me.
“Advisor.”
“Engineer,” I replied.
Our commander looked left and right, frowning. “How many green guys do you think we oughta take along, this time? Just one?”
“Against regulations for first contact on a planet above tech level eight,” Guts reminded him. “Sorry, sir.”
Olm sighed. “Two then?” he suggested, hopefully. “Three?”
Nuts shook her head. “I gotta bad feelin’ this time, Captain,” she said.
Melodramatic, yes, but we’ve learned to pay attention to her premonitions.
“Okay, then,” Captain Olm nodded. “Many. Dial 'em up, will you, Doc?”
Guts went over to a cabinet lining the far wall of the chamber, turning a knob all the way over to the last notch on a dial that said 0, 1, 2, 3, M.
(One of the most remarkable things noted by our contact team, when we first encountered Demmies, was how much they had already achieved without benefit of higher mathematics. Using clever, handmade rockets, their reckless astronauts had already reached their nearest moon. And yet, like some primitive early human tribes, they still had no word for any number higher than three! Oh, today some of the finest mathematical minds in the universe are from Dem. And yet, they cling - by almost-superstitious tradition - to a convention in daily conversation… that any number higher than three is-“many.”)
There followed a hum and a rattling wheeze,
then a panel hissed open and several impressive figures emerged from a swirling mist, all attired in lime-green jump suits. They were Demmie shaped, and possessed a Demmie’s pointy teeth, but they were also powerfully muscled and tall as a human. Across their chests, in big letters, were written.
JUMS
SMET
WEMS
KWALSKI
They stepped before the captain and saluted. He, in turn, retreated a pace and curtly motioned them to step aside. One learns quickly in the service, never make a habit of standing too close to greenies.
When they moved out of the way, it brought into view a smaller figure who had been standing behind them, also dressed in lime green. Her crisp salute tugged the uniform, pulling crossed bandoliers tightly across her chest, a display which normally would have put the captain into a panting sweat, calling for someone to relieve him at the con. Here, the sight rocked him back in dismay.
“Lieutenant Gala Morell, Captain,” she introduced herself. “You and your party will be safe with us on the job.” Snappily, she saluted a second time and joined the others.
“Aw hell,” Olm muttered to me as the security team took up stations behind us. “A girl greenie. I hate it when that happens!”
All I could do was shrug and share a brief glance with Nuts. I already agreed with her dour feeling about this mission.
The dissolution tech ushered us into position, taking any metal objects to be put in pneumatic tubes. Guts made sure, as always, that the medical kit went into the tube last, so it would be readily available upon arrival…
… a bit of mature, human-style prudence that he then proceeded to spoil by saying “Always try to slurry with a syringe on top.”
“Yup.” The captain nodded, perfunctorily. “In case of post-nozzle drip.”
But at that moment he was more interested in guns than puns, checking to make sure that there were fresh nanos loaded in the formidable blaster at his hip.
“Ready, sir?” the tech asked through the transparent door, trying to catch my gaze even as she addressed the captain. Her nickname, “Eyes,” came from big, doelike irises that she flashes whenever I look her way. She is very pretty, as Demmies go… and they will go all the way at the drop of a bootlace.
“Do it, do it, do it!” Olm urged, rocking from foot to foot.
She turned a switch and I felt a powerful tingling sensation.
For those of you who’ve never slurried, there can be no describing what it’s like to have a beam zap through you, reading the position of every cell in your body. Then comes the rush of solvent fluid, flooding in through a hundred vents, filling the transport chamber, rising from your boots to your thighs to your neck faster than you can cry, "I'm melting!"
It doesn't hurt. Really. But it is disconcerting to watch your hands dissolve right in front of you. Closing your eyelids won't help much, since they go next, leaving a dreadful second or two until your entire skull-brain and all-crumbles like a sugar confection in hot water.
****
Ever since it was proved-maybe a century ago-that the mind exists independent from the body, philosophers have hoped to tap marvelous insights or great wisdom from the plane of pure abstraction. Some try to do this by peering into dreams. Others hope to sample the filtered essence of thought from people who are in a liquid state.
Oh, it’s true that something seems to happen-thoughts flow-during that strange time when your nervous system isn’t solid anymore, but a churning swirl of loose neurons and separated synapses, gurggling supersonically down a narrow pipe two hundred miles long. Giving new meaning to “brain drain.”
But in my experience, these stray thoughts are seldom profound. On that particular day-as I recall-my focus was on the job. The most fundamental underpinnings of my task as Earthling Advisor.
First- above all other requirements-you have to like Demmies.
I mean really like them.
Try to imagine spending a voyage of several years crammed in tight quarters with over a hundred of the little devils, sharing constant peril while daily enduring their puckish, brilliant, idiotic, mercurial, and always astonishing natures. It would drive any normal man or woman to jibbering distraction.
Against such pressures, the human advisor aboard a Demmie ship must always display the legendary Earthling traits of calmness, reason and restraint. Plus-heaven help us-a genuine affection for the impossible creatures.
At times, this fondness is my only anchor. While I’m loyal to my Demmie captain and crewmates, there have been days when some infuriating antic leaves me frazzled to the bone. Times when I find that I can fathom the very different attitude chosen by our Spertin foes, who wish to roast every living Demmie, slowly, over a neutron star.
When such moments come, I have to take a deep breath, count to ten, and find reserves of patience deeper than a nebula. More often than not, it’s worth it.
Or so one part of me told the rest of my myriad selves, during that timeless interval when I had no solid form. When “me” was many and a sense of detachment seemed to come naturally.
Which just goes to show you that it never pays to do any deep thinking when you’re in a slurry.
****
I regained consciousness on a strange world, watching my hands reappear in front of me as the reconstructor at the Nozzle end of the Hose re-stacked my cells, one by one, in the same (more or less) relative positions they had been in before slurrying down.
Did I have that mole on f my hand, before? Isn’t it a lot like one I saw on the back of Olm’s neck…?
But no. Don’t go there. Still, while dismissing that spurious thought, I resisted the urge to shake my head or shrug. Best to let ligaments and things congeal a few extra seconds, lest something jar loose and roll away.
I did shift my eyes a bit to look through a window of the Nozzle Chamber, at a patch of cloud-flecked sky. Overhead, the Hose stretched upward, cleverly rendered invisible to radar, sonar, infrared, and most visible light. ( I could see it, of course. But then, Demmies are always amazed by our human ability to perceive the mystical color, “blue.”)
A final word about slurrying. In its way, it is an efficient mode of transport, and I'm not complaining. Things might have been worse. I'm told that true matter teleportation-where an object is read and replicated or “beamed,” atom-by-atom, instead of cell-by-cell-is a ridiculous impossibility. Quantum uncertainty and all that. Won’t ever happen.
Nevertheless, there is a Demmie research center that refuses to give up on the idea… and Demmies never cease to surprise us.
(Impossibility be damned. I recommend secretly blowing up the place, just to be su
re.)
****
Stumbling out of the Nozzle, we retrieved our tools from container-tubes and proceeded to look around the place. We appeared to have de-licquesced behind some boulders and shrubbery in an uncrowded portion of the park. Tall buildings could be seen jutting skyward beyond a surrounding copse of trees. Distant sounds of city traffic drifted toward us.
So far, so good. The greenies fanned out, very businesslike, covering all directions with their tidy blasters. I took out my scanner and surveyed various sensor bands.
“Life forms?” Olm said, peering around my shoulder, speaking loud enough to be heard over the traffic noise.
“Yes, Captain,” I replied, patiently. “Many.”
“Many,” Nuts repeated, morosely.
“Many,” Guts added, eyes filling with eagerness while he stroked his vivisection kit.
“Let’s go see,” Olm commanded, as I counted the seconds till something happened.
Something always happens.
Sure enough, at a count of eight, somebody screamed. We hurried toward the source, which turned out to be Lieutenant Morell. She panted, with one hand near her throat, pointing her blaster toward a set of bushes.
“I shot it!”
“What?” Olm demanded, shoving others aside to charge forward. “What was it?”
She came to attention. “I don’t know, sir. Something was spying on us. I saw the weirdest pair of eyes. Whatever it was, I think I got it.”
Jim Baen’s Universe Page 49
