3 x T

by Harry Turtledove

  Horns blared inside the palace, trumpeting a royal fanfare. Peering into the entrance hall, Condom saw the princess's serving-maid hurrying toward him, amazed delight on her face. His heart, among other things, leaped. He opened his arms and lumbered forward. "Hey, sweets, look, I done it, see? I done it!"

  She sidestepped with a dancer's adroitness, went gracefully to one knee before Elagabalus. "Welcome, your highness, in the name of my mistress, Princess Zamaria." She glanced behind her. "She comes to greet you even as I speak."

  The guardsmen bowed low, eyes on the polished marble floor. Condom, untroubled by effete civilized notions like politeness, gaped at the mountain of flesh wallowing toward him. Zamaria waddled, she wobbled, she wheezed; her vast rolls of fat shook like the gelatin that dances round a cold ham. And like a five-pound sausage stuffed into a three-pound skin, her huge bulk was shoehorned into a cloth-of-gold gown that clung mercilessly to every curve.

  "My darling!" she cried to her fianc?, her voice harsh as a raven's caw.

  Condom spoke with the rude frankness that marks the barbarian. "By Crumb, buddy, it's a good thing you're blind," he told Elagabalus. "If you could see, you'd run miles, and I ain't kidding."

  All heads snapped his way, then, as if drawn by some irresistible fascination, swung toward the Princess Zamaria. Her finger stabbed at the Trojan. "Kill him!" she screeched. "Kill him, kill him, kill him!"

  "Shit!" said Condom, and Faex leaped at him with a vicious spearthrust. But the Trojan, with no thoughts to slow his reflexes, sprang to one side and brought down both hands, club-fashion, on the back of the captain's neck. Faex smashed to the ground, pike flying from nerveless fingers. And Condom, still acting on instinct, seized Zamaria's maidservant, slung her over his shoulder, and dashed down the street, a hundred guardsmen pouring after him.

  If they had carried bows, he would have been pincushioned, but they had swords and pikes, and had to close with him to finish him off. Breath sobbing in his throat and the serving-wench in his ear, he reeled round a corner, the guards just a few strides behind. Then the Trojan, with a grunt of fright, whirled and dashed back the way he had come, straight toward the startled palace guards. But they had no chance to hack him down, for hard on his heels was the slavering spawn of Sloth-Amok's conjuration.

  Both sides forgot Condom, their common quarry, as they smashed together. "Demons, fiends, devils, satans!" a soldier shrieked. He would have gone through the whole catalog, but a deva killed him. Another guardsman, quicker-witted, exorcised a whole squadron of jinnees with a bottle of vermouth. Three flibbertigibbets danced maniacally up one side of a trooper and down the other. They were not much use as far as fighting went, but spread chaos far and wide.

  A cursing guardsman slashed at the monster in front of him. "What is that thing?" panted one of his squadmates, who had just unstrung a Harpy.

  "A barghest," the soldier said?someone, at least, knew one when he saw one.

  "Well, buy it a drink, then!" the other shouted. A lamia tore out his throat a moment later, and there was nobody to say he did not deserve it.

  Caught in the center of the maelstrom, Condom kicked and pounded his way toward the edge. In the struggle for survival, none of the combatants paid him any special heed. He had almost won free when an ogre loomed before him. Zamaria's serving-maid swooned as it extended a misshapen, gore-dripping paw toward the Trojan. It roared, "Say, you look like a cousin of mine. You from Darfurdadarbeda?"

  "Nah, my folks ain't from that far out in the Styx," Condom said.

  "Oh. Sorry, bud. You still look like her, though." With a berserk bellow of rage, the ogre returned to the fray.

  Condom sprang onto a stallion that was tied nearby to help the plot along, dug his heels into its side, and galloped for the city gates. A few angry shouts rose behind him, but guardsmen and creatures were still locked in fatal embrace (save, perhaps, for those troopers clutching succubi). The sounds of fighting faded in the distance.

  The gate guards did not hinder the Trojan's flight. Burly barbarians with gorgeous, half-clad wenches draped over their saddlebows were two a copper in those days, if the tales that come down from them are to be believed.

  The maidservant was awake and squirming when Condom reined the blowing stallion to a halt. The city was far away. The road ran through a glade of quiet, almost unearthly beauty. Tall, slim pines stood silhouetted against the flaming sky of sunset; thrush and warbler sang day's last sleepy songs. And to one side stretched a broad expanse of soft emerald grass.

  With a slow smile, Condom dismounted from the great horse. The maid's waist was supple under his fingers as he helped her descend. He laid a hand on her arm, gently guiding her toward the inviting meadow. Her warm flesh was smooth as silk.

  She kicked him in the crotch.

  He was still writhing on the ground when she clambered aboard the stallion, wheeled it about, and trotted back toward Zamorazamaria. After a while he could sit up. He tried to laugh gustily and think thoughts full of primitive nobility, thoughts on meeting misfortune with stoic equanimity and on the instability of fortune, but his groin hurt and he was none too good at thinking anyhow. He crawled off into the woods and was sick instead.

  THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

  Twice now, I've used ideas that originally appeared as bits of background in one story to give me another. My novel Noninterference (Del Rey, 1988) sprang from a bit of background business in a novelette that never sold. And something in another story of mine ("Herbig-Haro," my first sale to Stan Schmidt at Analog) seemed worth expanding into a story of its own. "The Road Not Taken" is the result: a first-contact story, but not of the usual sort.

  Captain Togram was using the chamberpot when the Indomitable broke out of hyperdrive. As happened all too often, nausea surged through the Roxolan officer. He raised the pot and was abruptly sick into it.

  When the spasm was done, he set the thundermug down and wiped his streaming eyes with the soft, gray-brown fur of his forearm. "The gods curse it!" he burst out. "Why don't the shipmasters warn us when they do that?" Several of his troopers echoed him more pungently.

  At that moment, a runner appeared in the doorway. "We're back in normal space," the youth squeaked, before dashing on to the next chamber. Jeers and oaths followed him: "No shit!" "Thanks for the news!" "Tell the steerers?they might not have got the word!"

  Togram sighed and scratched his muzzle in annoyance at his own irritability. As an officer, he was supposed to set an example for his soldiers. He was junior enough to take such responsibilities seriously, but had had enough service to realize he should never expect too much from anyone more than a couple of notches above him. High ranks went to those with ancient blood or fresh money.

  Sighing again, he stowed the chamberpot in its niche. The metal cover he slid over it did little to relieve the stench. After sixteen days in space, the Indomitable reeked of ordure, stale food, and staler bodies. It was no better in any other ship of the Roxolan fleet, or any other. Travel between the stars was simply like that. Stinks and darkness were part of the price the soldiers paid to make the kingdom grow.

  Togram picked up a lantern and shook it to rouse the glowmites inside. They flashed silver in alarm. Some races, the captain knew, lit their ships with torches or candles, but glowmites used less air, even if they could only shine intermittently.

  Ever the careful soldier, Togram checked his weapons while the light lasted. He always kept all four of his pistols loaded and ready to use; when landing operations began, one pair would go on his belt, the other in his boot tops. He was more worried about his sword. The perpetually moist air aboard ship was not good for the blade. Sure enough, he found a spot of rust to scour away.

  As he polished the rapier, he wondered what the new system would be like. He prayed for it to have a habitable planet. The air in the Indomitable might be too foul to breathe by the time the ship could get back to the nearest Roxolan-held planet. That was one of the risks starfarers took. It was not a major one?sma
ll yellow suns usually shepherded a life-bearing world or two?but it was there.

  He wished he hadn't let himself think about it; like an aching fang, the worry, once there, would not go away. He got up from his pile of bedding to see how the steerers were doing.

  As usual with them, both Ransisc and his apprentice Olgren were complaining about the poor quality of the glass through which they trained their spyglasses. "You ought to stop whining," Togram said, squinting in from the doorway. "At least you have light to see by." After seeing so long by glowmite lantern, he had to wait for his eyes to adjust to the harsh raw sunlight flooding the observation chamber before he could go in.

  Olgren's ears went back in annoyance. Ransisc was older and calmer. He set his hand on his apprentice's arm. "If you rise to all of Togram's jibes, you'll have time for nothing else?he's been a troublemaker since he came out of the egg. Isn't that right, Togram?"

  "Whatever you say." Togram liked the white-muzzled senior steerer. Unlike most of his breed, Ransisc did not act as if he believed his important job made him something special in the gods' scheme of things.

  Olgren stiffened suddenly; the tip of his stumpy tail twitched. "This one's a world!" he exclaimed.

  "Let's see," Ransisc said. Olgren moved away from his spyglass. The two steerers had been examining bright stars one by one, looking for those that would show discs and prove themselves actually to be planets.

  "It's a world," Ransisc said at length, "but not one for us?those yellow, banded planets always have poisonous air, and too much of it." Seeing Olgren's dejection, he added, "It's not a total loss?if we look along a line from that planet to its sun, we should find others fairly soon."

  "Try that one," Togram said, pointing toward a ruddy star that looked brighter than most of the others he could see.

  Olgren muttered something haughty about knowing his business better than any amateur, but Ransisc said sharply, "The captain has seen more worlds from space than you, sirrah. Suppose you do as he asks." Ears drooping dejectedly, Olgren obeyed.

  Then his pique vanished. "A planet with green patches!" he shouted.

  Ransisc had been aiming his spyglass at a different part of the sky, but that brought him hurrying over. He shoved his apprentice aside, fiddled with the spyglass's focus, peered long at the magnified image. Olgren was hopping from one foot to the other, his muddy brown fur puffed out with impatience to hear the verdict.

  "Maybe," the senior steerer said, and Olgren's face lit, but it fell again as Ransisc continued, "I don't see anything that looks like open water. If we find nothing better, I say we try it, but let's search a while longer."

  "You've just made a luof very happy," Togram said. Ransisc chuckled. The Roxolani brought the little creatures along to test new planets' air. If a luof could breathe it in the airlock of a flyer, it would also be safe for the animal's masters.

  The steerers growled in irritation as several stars in a row stubbornly stayed mere points of light. Then Ransisc stiffened at his spyglass. "Here it is," he said softly. "This is what we want. Come here, Olgren."

  "Oh my, yes," the apprentice said a moment later.

  "Go report it to Warmaster Slevon, and ask him if his devices have picked up any hyperdrive vibrations except for the fleet's." As Olgren hurried away, Ransisc beckoned Togram over. "See for yourself."

  The captain of foot bent over the eyepiece. Against the black of space, the world in the spyglass field looked achingly like Roxolan: deep ocean blue, covered with swirls of white cloud. A good-sized moon hung nearby. Both were in approximately half-phase, being nearer their star than was the Indomitable.

  "Did you spy any land?" Togram asked.

  "Look near the top of the image, below the ice cap," Ransisc said. "Those browns and greens aren't colors water usually takes. If we want any world in this system, you're looking at it now."

  They took turns examining the distant planet and trying to sketch its features until Olgren came back. "Well?" Togram said, though he saw the apprentice's ears were high and cheerful.

  "Not a hyperdrive emanation but ours in the whole system!" Olgren grinned. Ransisc and Togram both pounded him on the back, as if he were the cause of the good news and not just its bearer.

  The captain's smile was even wider than Olgren's. This was going to be an easy one, which, as a professional soldier, he thoroughly approved of. If no one hereabouts could build a hyperdrive, either the system had no intelligent life at all or its inhabitants were still primitives, ignorant of gunpowder, fliers, and other aspects of warfare as it was practiced among the stars.

  He rubbed his hands. He could hardly wait for landfall.

  * * *

  Buck Herzog was bored. After four months in space, with five and a half more staring him in the face, it was hardly surprising. Earth was a bright star behind the Ares III, with Luna a dimmer companion; Mars glowed ahead.

  "It's your exercise period, Buck," Art Snyder called. Of the five-person crew, he was probably the most officious.

  "All right, Pancho." Herzog sighed. He pushed himself over to the bicycle and began pumping away, at first languidly, then harder. The work helped keep calcium in his bones in spite of free-fall. Besides, it was something to do.

  Melissa Ott was listening to the news from home. "Fernando Valenzuela died last night," she said.

  "Who?" Snyder was not a baseball fan.

  Herzog was, and a Californian to boot. "I saw him at an Old-Timers' game once, and I remember my dad and my grandfather always talking about him," he said. "How old was he, Mel?"

  "Seventy-nine," she answered.

  "He always was too heavy," Herzog said sadly.

  "Jesus Christ!"

  Herzog blinked. No one on the Ares III had sounded that excited since liftoff from the American space station. Melissa was staring at the radar screen. "Freddie!" she yelled.

  Frederica Lindstrom, the ship's electronics expert, had just gotten out of the cramped shower space. She dove for the control board, still trailing a stream of water droplets. She did not bother with a towel; modesty aboard the Ares III had long since vanished.

  Melissa's shout even made Claude Jonnard stick his head out of the little biology lab where he spent most of his time. "What's wrong?" he called from the hatchway.

  "Radar's gone to hell," Melissa told him.

  "What do you mean, gone to hell?" Jonnard demanded indignantly. He was one of those annoying people who think quantitatively all the time, and think everyone else does, too.

  "There are about a hundred, maybe a hundred fifty, objects on the screen that have no right to be there," answered Frederica Lindstrom, who had a milder case of the same disease. "Range appears to be a couple of million kilometers."

  "They weren't there a minute ago, either," Melissa said. "I hollered when they showed up."

  As Frederica fiddled with the radar and the computer, Herzog stayed on the exercise bike, feeling singularly useless: What good is a geologist millions of kilometers away from rocks? He wouldn't even get his name in the history books?no one remembers the crew of the third expedition to anywhere.

  Frederica finished her checks. "I can't find anything wrong," she said, sounding angry at herself and the equipment both.

  "Time to get on the horn to Earth, Freddie," Art Snyder said. "If I'm going to land this beast, I can't have the radar telling me lies."

  Melissa was already talking into the microphone. "Houston, this is Ares III. We have a problem?"

  Even at light-speed, there were a good many minutes of waiting. They crawled past, one by one. Everyone jumped when the speaker crackled to life. "Ares III, this is Houston Control. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't quite know how to tell you this, but we see them too."

  The communicator kept talking, but no one was listening to her anymore. Herzog felt his scalp tingle as his hair, in primitive reflex, tried to stand on end. Awe filled him. He had never thought he would live to see humanity contact another race. "Call them, Mel," he said urgently.


  She hesitated. "I don't know, Buck. Maybe we should let Houston handle this."

  "Screw Houston," he said, surprised at his own vehemence. "By the time the bureaucrats down there figure out what to do, we'll be coming down on Mars. We're the people on the spot. Are you going to throw away the most important moment in the history of the species?"

  Melissa looked from one of her crewmates to the next. Whatever she saw in their faces must have satisfied her, for she shifted the aim of the antenna and began to speak: "This is the spacecraft Ares III, calling the unknown ships. Welcome from the people of Earth." She turned off the transmitter for a moment. "How many languages do we have?"

  The call went out in Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, even Latin. ("Who knows the last time they may have visited?" Frederica said when Snyder gave her an odd look.)

  If the wait for a reply from Earth had been long, this one was infinitely worse. The delay stretched far, far past the fifteen-second speed-of-light round trip. "Even if they don't speak any of our languages, shouldn't they say something?" Melissa demanded of the air. It did not answer, nor did the aliens.

  Then, one at a time, the strange ships began darting away sunward, toward Earth. "My God, the acceleration!" Snyder said. "Those are no rockets!" He looked suddenly sheepish. "I don't suppose starships would have rockets, would they?"

  The Ares III lay alone again in its part of space, pursuing its Hohmann orbit inexorably toward Mars. Buck Herzog wanted to cry.