So which way did I want to lose?
In the end, chance decided it for me. I circulated around the edges of the party until I saw a shadowy opening between two wall panels. The way to a private suite? To the Old Terran suite, if I was lucky. I slithered between the panels, trying to look like a glazed-over Boopsie looking for the facilities.
Three steps down the temp passageway, and I smelled rotten seaweed. Damn, wrong suite. I started to edge back when I heard an unmistakable voice rising above the high-pitched party chatter. “Girlfriend? What girlfriend? What diary?”
Old Terran twang, loud voice, crashing in with questions that didn’t really need to be asked. Good old Jack.
It didn’t, somehow, seem like a good time to reenter the party and keep circulating. I kept on the way I was going. Even if I didn’t find anything in the Hatartalan quarters, at least Jack wouldn’t find me there.
But I did. Find something, that is. Although it took me a moment to recognize the significance of it.
The Hatartalan module was lit in their preferred range of frequencies. To human eyes, everything looked dark red and hexagonal, comb upon honeycomb of storage and sleep and sitting modules all alike, all subdivided into hundreds of thousands of twinkling sub-compartments, all slightly sticky with the trail of personal markers the Hatartalan spray wherever they claim territory.
I’d edged right behind the Hatartalan ambassador at the party and had gotten a strong whiff of his personal spray—a bit on the gamy side, with overtones of musk and the usual rotten seaweed. No member of his entourage had a spray anywhere near so marked; they wouldn’t dare. I followed the seaweed-musk smelt to a clutch of honeycomb formations that stank so strongly of the ambassador, I couldn’t even pick out any competing scents. All the way my feet crunched and squished on the debris of what must have been a pre-party party. There were strands of the dried-seaweed stuff hanging from the honeycombs, partially squished jellyeggs drooping over edges like surrealist watches, bright scraps of ribbon and tinsel and paper for nest building stowed in the pigeonholes of one honeycomb and cascading down the side.
And there it was. Old Terran writing. Old Terran gaudy red-bordered paper; the ambassador might have assimilated the data into some waxen secretion, but he’d been too much of a slob or a magpie, choose one, to throw away the original.
This would do it beautifully, a packet of notes in Jack’s handwriting and stinking of the ambassador’s personal spray. I clutched the treasure to my bosom while debating how to sneak it out of the party. The clingy little black dress hadn’t offered many possibilities for concealment even before I turned it into an off-the-shoulder number, and the jacket with its inside zippered pockets was somewhere outside amid the synthetic shrubbery.
A noise that was at once both question and annoying buzz interrupted my silent debate about the ethics of the only smuggling system I had been able to think of. I turned slowly, because whatever made that noise sounded like something I didn’t want to annoy. It hovered at the level of my midriff, gleaming, multifaceted, beautiful and deadly.
A bee-eye. Excuse me, I mean B.I., Bacatus inaccessus, as our xenobiologists tagged it before realizing it was actually the very rare and very elder last form in the Hatartalan life cycle. Inaccessus not because it was rare, but because the first two xenos to see one hadn’t lived to do follow-up studies. Bee-eyes take offense very, very easily.
How many Hatartalans made it from the standard adult stage—the one the ambassador was in—to achieve B.I. status? Not more than one in a million, if the odds were anything like those against immature spawn making it to adult stage. And who cared? The real question was, what were the odds on me making it back the way I came, with or without the stinking notes? Not good enough to make me want to try calculating them. Still, there didn’t seem to be any other reasonable move. Why didn’t someone tell me the Hatartalans had a B.I. in the entourage? They’re rare enough it should be hot news—unless they were keeping it secret for some reason—like entrapping little spies. That was dumb, it would be like using a cannonball to shoot a mosquito.
I thought all this between one dry-mouthed gulp and the next, already shuffling sideways as if I thought the bee-eye would just let me go back the way I came. At the same time the bee-eye was responding to my body language and alerting itself. It spouted a column of shimmering scales that started in midair, about where it had floated originally, and lifted its faceted head (body? eye?) to my eye level.
“So sorry, looking for the ladies’, must’ve lost my way,” I jabbered, sidling toward the dark passageway some uncounted number of sticky steps behind me, “just go back to the party now, sorry to disturb you, senior gentlespecies…”
The bee-eye hummed once on a sharper note and zipped around me, blocking my retreat. Oh, well, I hadn’t really thought it would be that easy. How long did it take for bee-eye venom to work on a small-sized human body? My graduate studies hadn’t progressed far enough to go into such details before the scholarship fund ran out and I had to find a real job. At the time I’d thought myself lucky to get recruited by GIS. Who but the intelligence services would want an academic dropout with a minor in heuristic mathematics, a major in xenocultural studies, and a speaking knowledge of five alien languages in addition to Standard Galactic?
Just now I wasn’t feeling so lucky. Nothing in my training—academic or intelligence—had covered how to deal with a life-form so rare and senior that none of my instructors had ever even seen one.
Stories, stories, dummy, I told myself. In times of stress we revert to old patterns. I wasn’t really a spy. For that matter, I wasn’t really a xenology student. Somewhere, way back there, I was still a skinny kid sitting in the central hall of Complex B449, telling stories to keep my little brothers happy whenever they shut off our vid service for nonpayment again.
You have to tailor your stories to the audience. My little brothers liked lots of violence and somebody killed every few minutes… Woops, wrong line of thought. What did bee-eyes like? Nobody knew. Okay, what would ordinary Hatartalans expect and half believe before you started telling it? What were Hatartalan stories?
I wiped my one free hand on the skirt of the black dress and started in on the first idea that flashed on me; no second chances, this one had better work.3
Which it did.
The bee-eye personally escorted me down the access corridor and out through the party suite. With that level of support, I didn’t really need to smuggle the papers out—I could have walked out clutching them in my hot little hand—but I thought it would be cooler if Jack didn’t know exactly what I’d been there for until I’d had a chance to make delivery. As we reached the anonymous pile of coats and handbags and bodypockets I’d stumbled over coming in, I bent my knees and scooped up somebody’s little black bag. It was just big enough to hold the notes, and I barely got them stuffed inside before the bee-eye’s insistent buzzing warned me that I’d better keep moving.
People backed off to let us through. Jack was there, even redder in the face than last time; he recognized me and started to say something, but nobody—nobody—interferes with a bee-eye, as the Hatartalans there made quite clear to him.
The bee-eye buzzed behind me until we reached a nice well lit multimodule intersection with an Andromedan gravity-well fountain sparkling through three stories of open space. Then it shrank down to its original pod like shape and zipped back to the Hatartalan module, while I went around a few levels and took a passenger pod through the Rigel-norm module and did all the usual things to shake any possible tails. With incredible self-restraint, I didn’t even open the little black bag and take a second look at my find until I got back here to vox the report.
Now that’s done, I’m going to have a nice long look at the rest of the stuff in the bag before returning it to Buffie. You wouldn’t believe what that girl puts down in her diary!
“You left a few points out of your report,” my supervisor commented.
I shrugged. “Once a g
raduate student, always a graduate student…. Notice the little numbers? I was going to add foot-notes, but you printed out the text before I got around to it.”
“I suggest you add them. Now, before I pass it on.”
Notes
1. I knew that already, of course. I’d studied pictures of both subjects before starting to work the case. The Hatartalan picture didn’t help much—they all look alike to human eyes—but my buddy Jack, tall and paunchy and red-faced and given to unfortunately loud suits, was a snap to pick out of a crowd. It was a piece of extra luck that I got to “meet” him this way. Or so I thought at the time.
2. At least the Hatartalans are species-programmed for this behavior. What human story we tell that makes us want to trash our own worlds, I’ve never figured out.
3. Okay. You want to know what story? Simple. Humans tell Protecting the Young a lot. Hatartalans tell Destroying the Young (For the Good of the Race). Their natural bias is to let practically all of their spawn die so that only the fittest survive to the normal adult life cycle, right? And bee-eyes, the next life-cycle stage, are to normal adults as adults are to the insectoid spawn—one in a million or so. It seemed a credible assumption that bee-eyes would be programmed to destroy adults for any failing, rather than protecting them. I told the bee-eye that the Hatartalan ambassador had been caught selling secret data to the Old Terrans and that if I got the proof back to my bosses GIS would probably arrange a fatal accident for him. Of course, the facts were the other way around, but the bee-eye believed this story easily because it fitted the basic Hatartalan myth.
The Small Penance of Lady Disdain
Michael Coney
“How sick is she?”
“She has a day to live, maybe two. She’s very anxious to see you before she dies.” Hearing these words, he was ushered into the bedchamber of Lady Disdain, president of Earth.
“Imry Sanders.” Painfully she extended a hand from under the covers. “It was good of you to come.” Her face was a mask of desiccated skin stretched tightly over the skull. Imry tried to reconcile this pale ruin with the face of Lady Disdain as he’d first met her in Hotel Andromeda—how long ago was it?—over two hundred years. She’d never been beautiful; she was too arrogant for that. But she had looked… aristocratic. Strong. And God, how he’d hated her in those far-off days.
He looked around the room: the same sumptuous trappings she’d surrounded herself with in Hotel Andromeda. The rich tapestries, the deep rugs, the jade ornaments, the miniature peacocks, the royal blue and the purple. The scent of wild roses. All the badges of office. No sound; the fabrics deadened even her harsh breathing, transforming it to a sigh, so that for a moment he thought the elevator ride had blocked his ears.
He murmured something polite, taking the hand briefly, replacing it carefully on the covers. Why had this dreadful woman summoned him from his comfortable home on Secunda? Here on crowded Old Earth, trees grew only in designated wilderness areas and people lived in multilevel cities. He’d only lived twenty years on Earth, compared to two hundred years on Secunda. Secunda was home now. He resented being dragged away from it. But you don’t disobey a summons from the president of Earth.
“I’m sorry to hear of your illness, my lady.” It was the only topic of conversation he could think of.
“I’m dying, yes, but that’s not important. Death is in our genes for a purpose. My clone-sister Lady Fortune is ready to take over, now that the mindmeld has taken place. You met her outside, I believe.”
Another moment of readjustment. The girl outside had been beautiful. Time was a killer. “She looked very young to be president of Earth.”
“Only physically. The mindmeld has given her all my knowledge and experience. Well, Imry Sanders. You’ll be wondering why I sent for you.”
“It did cross my mind.” He allowed himself a faint smile. The Froanways journey had taken almost three years; he’d had plenty of time to wonder, even allowing for in-flight retabolism.
The thin lips stretched slightly. Was that an answering smile? “You’re not an easy man to locate. Secunda is somewhat… casual, shall we say, about personnel records.”
“We like it that way.”
“Yes, I can understand that.” She sighed. “Your name has been known to me for two hundred years, ever since my entourage arrived on Earth. Imry Sanders, my deputy told me. Imry Sanders was asking some odd questions. The name haunted me. I kept waiting… waiting for it to appear again. It never did. For that I owe you a great debt. Perhaps all humans do. Only in the last ten years, when I knew my time was limited, have I tried to locate you. It took seven standard years. Now here you are, and I wish to thank you.”
He stared at her. Lady Disdain wanted to thank him, a mere blipreader? This appalling old woman, product of an Earth-based project for genetic leadership material that produced only monstrous snobs with medieval titles, wanted to thank him? There had to be some mistake. What could he say? I am unworthy. No; he wouldn’t sink to that kind of banality. But what did she want to thank him for? What great deed did she think he’d performed? Was it—and he felt the beginnings of an enormous embarrassment—a case of mistaken identity?
“And I wish to bestow an honor upon you,” she continued. “The honor is normally hereditary, but we must start making some exceptions, I think.” She closed her eyes, looking suddenly exhausted. “There have been accusations of elitism,” she murmured. “Perhaps they are right.”
She seemed to be asleep. He walked over to the window and looked out at the city. Direct sunlight illuminated this room only; it rose clear of the glittering canopy of solar cells stretching to the horizon. It was ironic that in using the sun for power. Earth deprived people of its light. And not a tree, not a blade of grass in sight. Despite the warmth, he shivered.
Oh, to be on Secunda, walking with Megan among the tree-clad hills!
A cold anger gripped him. He swung back toward the dreadful figure on the bed. He didn’t want her thanks; he didn’t want her honor, whatever it was. He wanted to go home. He walked slowly to the bed. She looked very frail; it would be a simple matter to snuff out that guttering candle of life. A pillow over the face. He stood looking down at her. Behind that veneer of genteel sophistication, she was still the same bully who had thrown her weight about in Hotel Andromeda two hundred years ago, and caged up a shipload of Secundans like animals.
There had been more meat on her bones then.
He chuckled at the significance of that last thought, and the murderous moment passed.
Young Imry Sanders first met Lady Adelaide Disdain of Cartaginia shortly after being attacked by the girl gang from Secunda.
An hour earlier he’d ridden into the spaceborne vastness of Hotel Andromeda. The hotel scared him: the mulling multitudes, the strange smells, the yelling voices, the blazing bright lights instead of good honest sunlight and trees and birds.
The decisions, too. A blaring voice suddenly drowned out the other noises, asking him to vote on an incomprehensible topic. “All humans please go to the nearest referendum booth and punch green if you are in favor of the proposition, red if not.”
Imry had been raised in one of Earth’s protected wilderness areas; spent the whole of his life preparing for this voyage. He was bound for Cartaginia, so they told him, where people lived in the open air in small towns surrounded by forests and grasslands. And now here he was in Hotel Andromeda: covered, multilevel. He fought a deadly claustrophobia.
“You all right?” It was a young woman, about twenty standard years old—much the same age as Imry.
“I… I guess I’m surprised at this place. I’ve just arrived on the Earth shuttle.” He felt better saying that. Imry Sanders, a genuine product of the mother planet. Not one of your Johnny-come-lately colonists. A founding father, in a way. And so, all by himself, he learned the first lesson of social intercourse between colonists: Make the most of your background. “I’m bound for Cartaginia,” he added.
“I’m from Secund
a, bound for Earth,” she said surprisingly. Imry had been led to believe the inhabitants of Earth’s first colony were little better than animals. Yet this girl looked good: pale gray jumpsuit, soft brown hair to her shoulders, slanting green eyes, wide mouth. And yet… was there a hint of wildness in those eyes? But when some goon pushed past her and knocked her against him, he didn’t mind.
She smiled. “Sorry.” She glanced behind him. A vast mob of people were surging out of the shuttle; they reached Imry and swirled him along like a breaking wave. The last he saw of the Secundan was a rueful grin as she was swept to the other side of a pillar.
“Come on, Imry!” shouted someone. “Let’s get to know this place. There are four human modules docked right now!”
Six months of being cooped up in the shuttle had been too much for them, and some ten thousand human juveniles were about to run amok. Imry shrugged. Somebody would sort it out. He slipped away from the accents of Earth, and walked alone in Hotel Andromeda among humans and humanoids of all worlds.
Much later he found himself well away from the crowds. Not exactly lost, because there were maps stuck to all the pillars; a guy couldn’t go far wrong. But he had a craving to find an outside wall; he needed some point of reference. All this vastness hanging somewhere in space was unreal and he needed something solid he could lean his back against. He craved trees and stone walls and rain drifting down from a real sky.
At last he found a narrow corridor leading off into the distance. For all he knew this was a connector, and space was on the other side of these walls. A window would have been nice. His feet were getting tired; there were no walkways here. A group of seven human-shaped figures approached from the opposite direction. He hoped they weren’t from his shuttle. He’d had enough of the company of his fellow travelers for a while.
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