by Ric Locke
Peters nodded. “Yes, that would be satisfactory. One of the more important things I wish to see will be all the way aft, if I understand it.”
Fers looked at him again, a longer inspection this time. “I believe I know what you mean. No, you won’t find thuthenkre quarters here.” He pursed his lips in a disgusted moue. “I’ve seen a few of them. It isn’t pleasant.”
“No… is it possible to rehabilitate the inhabitants? We have nearly a square of them on our hands, and it’s almost impossible to communicate with them, let alone help them in any meaningful way.”
Fers eyed him seriously this time, eyebrows lifted, but said only, “I don’t see how the concept of ‘rehabilitation’ applies in this case. If their reproductive systems aren’t damaged we could take them into our own tuwe, or perhaps distribute them among several ships. The contribution to our bloodlines would be of value.”
The implications of that needed some thought. “About half of them are Grallt,” he said as neutrally as possible.
“Even easier.” Fredik Fers made a curious gesture, a sharp jerk of the chin up and to the right. “Grallt don’t live like we do, and we don’t interfere when it isn’t necessary. Those could be accommodated or disposed of in many ways.”
“Disposed of?”
The ferassi dismissed the question with a negligent wave, staring thoughtfully at nothing. “If you are telling the truth it is good news of a sort,” he mused.
Peters lifted an eyebrow. “How so?”
“We have heard of some few successes against the dar ptith recently, and their depredations seem to be dropping off. If they’ve been reduced to incorporating Grallt females into their tuwe in the place of ferassi, it means they are becoming somewhat debilitated.” He gestured. “Here is the galley. What would you like to eat?”
“Something soft, bland, and sweet,” Peters specified. The adrenalin was wearing off, and the hangover wasn’t; his stomach was an uncomfortably intrusive presence, his muscles ached, and his head felt like it had been worked over with hammers. “If you have ever overindulged, you probably know how I feel.”
“Yes, I’ve done it once or twice,” the ferassi said with wry amusement. “Some people recommend more of what caused the problem in the first place.”
“That doesn’t cure it, it only puts it off a little longer. Eventually the bill must be paid.”
“That’s my experience as well. Just a moment.” He rapped on the wall next to a windowlike opening, and a female Grallt appeared. They exchanged words for a few moments; the Grallt grinned, bobbed her head, and disappeared, to return with a container the size of a cereal bowl and a tall tumbler of clear liquid. Fers pointed. “The bowl contains tiplirik pudding, soft and sweet as specified, and easily digestible. The liquid is water; you need a lot of it.”
“You have had the experience,” Peters said with some humor. “It sounds precisely appropriate.” He took bowl and glass, nodded his thanks, and carried them over to a table. Fers remained behind, exchanging further words with the servitor, then followed, laying a shiny metal spoon on the table and taking a seat.
Peters took a bite. It was bland, sweet, and smooth, with a taste a little like butterscotch; perfect. He ate perhaps half of the serving, taking sips of water between bites, then looked up. “That’s all for now, I think,” he admitted. “I’ll want something more later, assuming my abused systems don’t reject this.”
Fers sipped his own drink, a chunky tumbler of something clear with a blue tinge, and smiled. “Yes, there’s always that possibility. Are you ready to go?”
“Yes, I think so—no, wait.” He laid his left forearm on the table, pressed buttons to extrude the control display. “You called this a ‘punishment suit’. From what I’ve seen it’s a standard airsuit with extra programming. Can we cancel that? I think the controller for the disciplinary functions is well out of reach, but I’m not comfortable with the idea, and the rest of the crew might well object to a prisoner being escorted on a tour.”
“You know how to program a suit?”
“I know how to program the Grallt one I was wearing. Is it still available? Perhaps it would be easier if I just changed.”
“No, your Grallt suit isn’t available. We destroyed it to get you out of it.”
“Why? The override is easily accessible.”
“We didn’t know it, and we were in a hurry.”
“I see, I think… the controls aren’t in a language I recognize. Can you guide me through the functions?”
“Simpler to do it this way. Let me touch the control square.” He reached over, manipulated buttons; the screen cleared, then reformed, displaying Grallt characters. “Can you take it from there?”
“Yes, I think so.” Peters and Todd had experimented with their suits, discovering that programming them was complex and sometimes contradictory. It was much easier to use the larger machine at the suit office to create a program, then download it to the buckle, but everything was possible if the user was patient and persevered. He worked for a little while, finally getting the suit to fade to tan, then assume the blue-and-white of his zerkre rank.
“There,” he said with satisfaction. “The disciplinary functions seem to be here, but it wants a password.”
“Yes. I’ll enter it.”
“I think I trust you.”
Fers smiled thinly. “You’ll have to in this case.” He leaned over to punch in the sequence. “There,” he said briskly. “I’ve canceled the disciplinary functions, and entered the privileges of a guest aboard the ship. Are you ready for your tour now?”
“Yes, let’s go.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
After the first utle of traipsing around the corridors of Trader 1049 Peters was convinced that these people had about the same relationship with the ones who’d shot up Llapaaloapalla as he did with the pirates infesting the Indonesian archipelago.
The ship didn’t have nearly the population of the Grallt trader, either absolutely or in proportion, but there were people in the corridors and the rooms they visited. All he saw in the after sections were Grallt, but they were just people; about half were female, and they were happy, sad, busy, worried, jaunty, as appropriate to personality and circumstances. There was subdued horseplay.
One woman was singing softly to herself, and the other clerks at desks nearby were craning their heads. He touched Fers on the arm, and they stopped and listened. A pretty song, performed in a cool clear voice that sent shivers up his spine. One of the others began tapping his upper arm, keeping time, and several joined in, finishing the chorus in multipart harmony. Imagining that scene on the pirate ship, among the unfortunates in the aft bunkroom, would have taken more brain power than he had, even if he weren’t still in the throes of a hangover.
They took a long straight corridor right aft, ending at a bare bulkhead Fers claimed was the stern. Peters had no reason to doubt that, but no way to verify it; from there it was up and down stairways and corridors and in and out of compartments. There were only three decks above the holds in the after section, the remainder of the volume being taken up with trade goods. He saw his first new zifthkakik, sealed up in metal cans like oversized foodstuffs. Most of the stock was either smallship-sized, like the ones that propelled the planes and dli, or in two slightly larger sizes intended for vessels of various sizes. There were four monsters like the one that supported Llapaaloapalla; they weren’t in cans, just chocked and boomed to the deck.
He began to notice that all the people they met were deferential, some nodding, others bobbing in a sort of curtsey, male and female alike. That shouldn’t have been strange—Fers was presumably their officer—but the courtesy seemed to be as much to him as it was to the ferassi. Then he noticed that none of them looked straight at them in curiosity, but used sidelong glances and occasional whispers. He couldn’t define why that bothered him.
Grallt children were around, laughing and playing games in the corridors, and a good-sized compartment was set u
p as a gym and playroom, full of toys and exercise equipment, painted and decorated in bright colors. They didn’t inspect every living compartment they came to—not enough time, and Peters wanted a quick look—but by the time they got to the engine room he was confident that there was no compartment aboard Trader 1049 analogous to the Hellhole they’d found on the pirate vessel.
The engine room was amidships, and according to Fredik—they’d progressed to first names—was in the geometric center of the ship. “That isn’t strictly necessary,” the ferassi explained, “but locating the zifthkakik off center wastes some of the field volume. Keeping them in the center uses it more efficiently.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to build the ship in the shape of a sphere or spheroid? That way you could fill the field volume almost completely.”
Fers laughed. “It’s not that important, and it’s a lot easier to build a rectangle. Imagine all the curves and odd-shaped pieces!” Peters thought back to the bilges and bow area of the carrier, the slippery ovoids of submarines, and compound curves on the bows and sterns of cheapjack rustbucket freighters, and wondered.
The zifthkakik were the same type the pirate ship had used. He didn’t comment on that, only asked, “Why two? Wouldn’t it be better to have a single larger one?”
“Larger ones are rare,” Fers explained. “We only get two and eight per uzul of the large size you saw below. Besides, using them in pairs makes certain motions of the ship easier to control.” He explained that, using technical terms that glazed Peters’s eyes after the first sentence or so. He noticed, and grimaced. “Never mind! It’s just handier in some ways.”
“I can accept that,” Peters said with a grave expression, and Fers grinned at him.
Gell had been mistaken; the ship did have accommodation for smaller vessels, eight of them. Fredik explained that they docked in niches cut away from the corners of the long sides. “When they’re docked, they look like part of the ship. That’s probably where your friend got the impression that we don’t have any.”
“What about atmosphere flyers?”
“There are two of those, kept all the way forward topside. Their bays have doors, so again you wouldn’t see them from outside the ship.”
“Could I see one?”
He frowned. “They aren’t secrets, but you’d have to go get your suit set up. The atmosphere controls are on the default setting, and you wouldn’t be comfortable.”
“I’ve already adjusted that,” Peters said offhand. “It’s set for the mix I like. Thank you for calling up the Grallt programming, by the way. I would never have been able to do it otherwise.”
“When did you do that?”
“In the food room, back aft in the Grallt section. We stopped for a snack, and you excused yourself to use the toilet, remember?”
Fers looked at him, body still, eyes serious. “You programmed your suit atmosphere in the time it took me to urinate and wash up?”
“Well, yes.” He held up his arm. “I couldn’t have done it that quickly to the Grallt suit. It’s much handier to have the controls where they’re easily accessible.”
The ferassi just shook his head, expression serious, and indicated the passageway. “We go that way.” For the next few tle he seemed thoughtful, a bit pensive, but by the time they’d looked at a few compartments—food storage, here, and preliminary preparation—he had recovered his former demeanor, brisk and not quite deferential.
All the way forward was where Trader 1049 most resembled the pirate vessel. There was more space between decks, and the fittings were more elegant and luxurious. Fers knocked on compartment doors before entering; he hadn’t noticed that before. Occupied compartments yielded raised eyebrows and other puzzled expressions; Peters was addressed matter-of-factly by several people, and his failure to respond had to be explained each time. That slowed them down, and in more than one case he caught movement out of the corner of an eye as a ferassi they’d spoken to left his compartment to confer with another.
Forward and below was the weapons bay, which held half a dozen breakbeam generators and a store of the thin cylindrical objects that had puzzled them on the pirate ship. Fers used a word in his language to describe them. “There’s no word in the Trade for these, because we don’t sell them; they’re incredibly rare. They’re alive, or so we suppose.”
“Oh? What do they do?”
“When launched they always hit their target,” Fers said seriously. “If there is something in view when they emerge they’ll follow it, and they never fail to catch up. They carry a charge of explosive, and are extremely destructive.”
Peters opened his mouth to talk about guided missiles, then changed his mind and said only, “Remarkable.”
“Yes, it is,” Fers agreed. “And as I said, they’re incredibly rare. We’d like to have more of them, of course, but we never get them, so they’re only to be used as an absolute last resort.”
“I can see that.” Idiots! A weapons system they’re trained not to use? I reckon we ought to be thankful. Zifthkakik-driven missiles could’ve been a real problem, an’ that’s a fact.
A ferassi had come in while they were looking over the missiles; he gestured and said something. Fers responded, then turned to Peters: “It would appear that Horsig has returned from his mission. We are required in the office of the ul’ptarze, the First of the ship.”
Peters nodded. “Show the way.”
Fers gestured at the newcomer. “This is ptarze Brendik Jons, Second for ship-management. Ptarze Jons, this is—” he hesitated a beat “—ze Peters, of whom you may have heard. Ze Peters doesn’t speak Language, but he knows the Trade very well.”
Peters had a hunch. “Ptarze Jons,” he said briskly, accompanying it with a slight nod.
The other nodded back, cracking the most minimal smile possible, and spoke in his own language. Fers responded, and the officer—had to be, Peters was almost homesick—spoke at some length. “What is your rank, ze Peters?” he asked when he’d finished conferring with the junior officer.
“I am a zerkre of the third precedence of Llapaaloapalla, ptarze Jons.”
The officer was blond; his nearly invisible eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “So you do know what the suit pattern means,” he said with a trace of incredulity. “The reports were difficult to credit.” He spoke at some length to Fers, who pronounced a short phrase ending with “—ptarze Jons,” then gestured quickly, palm forward, hand over his mouth. The officer responded with a similar gesture of his own, sketchier, and looked expectantly at Peters.
Peters nodded, received a nod in return, and the officer turned and left, with a parting sentence aimed at Fers. He thought he’d caught something familiar in that, and asked, “What did he say at the last?”
Fers produced one of his thin smiles. “Ptarze Jons says that my tame khuma has better manners than any trader-Grallt of his experience. Ul’ptarze Troy may be less unhappy than expected.”
“When the cap’n ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy,” Peters murmured to himself. When Fers looked up, with a puzzled expression on his face, he explained: “An appropriate aphorism in my language, probably untranslatable. Are we to see the ul’ptarze now?”
“Yes. He is waiting, with Horsig and the other agents.”
Peters grimaced. “Then let us go, by all means. We shouldn’t keep the captain waiting.”
* * *
The ul’ptarze of Trader 1049 received them in a compartment just aft of the control deck. Peters got a glimpse of a row of chairs facing large transparencies, similar to what he’d seen on the pirate ship if larger and in rather better order, before being ushered in to the Presence by a Grallt who stood by the door. The guard had one of the push-force weapons, on a harness like a Sam Browne belt, and a rigidly neutral expression. Peters acknowledged him with a nod as he passed, thinking, Been there, done that.
The room was about six meters by seven, and contained a pair of settees with a low table between them, a higher table
surrounded by carved wooden chairs, and an ordinary-looking desk. Ptarze Jons occupied one of the chairs before the desk, and Chuckles—Horsig—and another Grallt stood to one side.
A woman with a tumble of glossy black curls down her back sat facing away from the entry. She looked up, displaying a profile as nearly perfect as possible on a living person and a distant, almost absent expression. It occurred to Peters that this was the first young-adult female ferassi he had seen. He’d noticed several matrons and older women in the ferassi berthing area, and an inordinate number of families seemed to have nubile teenagers, but until now he hadn’t seen a woman of an age to be interesting to, say, himself.
Elisin Troy was blond, as his Ops Officer was, but neither of them was of the heavyset body type exhibited by the pirates. The ul’ptarze didn’t rise as they entered, just regarded them over hands folded in front as if in prayer. Fredik Fers stepped forward and rendered the hand-before-mouth salute. Peters contented himself with a nod; rendering the Navy salute would imply using his Navy rank, and that would put him at a considerable disadvantage.
The ul’ptarze returned the salute with a negligent wave that ended with a little wiggle of the fingers. “I understand you don’t speak our language,” he began. “We will use the Trade language. Please be seated—” he hesitated “—ipze Peters, and you, too, ipze Fers.” Troy returned to his prayerlike pose as they seated themselves. “It seemed appropriate to use your equivalent rank, rather than the simple ‘ze’ we would normally accord a visitor of unknown status. Do you object?”
“Not at all, ul’ptarze Troy. I don’t know your terms and procedures of formal respect, and hope you will be tolerant. Be sure that I mean no disrespect should I err.”
Troy’s smile was slight but genuinely amused. “We will make allowances. You have met ptarze Jons. The female is de’ze Ander Korwits. De’ze Korwits does not speak the Trade, but her presence here is necessary, as she is—hm.” He considered for a moment, eyes distant, then glanced at her before looking back at Peters. “De’ze Korwits advises us on proper conduct; I can’t explain it better without using words that don’t exist in the Trade language.”
