Pet Noir

by Katharine Kerr

  “What are you gloating about?”

  “Nada. Like the admiral said, it’s going to be quite a party, that’s all.”

  The iris unwinds itself, and the sound of cheering fills the launch. Through the opening she can see crowds, an improvised stand, bunting, holopix cameras, and under an enormous sunshade, the President herself.

  “Oh jeezuz!” Sam snarls. “We’re fucking heroes!”

  “That’s right, Mr. Bailey.” Chang waves them out. “But you know old Iron Snout. He likes his little joke.”

  Chapter Ten

  “I tell you, Lacey, Mrs. Bug’s people are turning out to be a hell of a lot more complex than we ever thought.” Carol pauses for a sip of apple brandy and soda. “I had my comp unit collate all the data we’ve got on them for Buddy. All he has to do is access her to get it.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Carol.” Buddy sounds almost obscenely pleased at the thought. “I shall do so immediately, and I appreciate your kindness in thinking of me.”

  “What’s wrong with you, disk-flipper?” Carol scowls at him. “You planning something weird?”

  Buddy makes a humming sound that could pass for a snort of annoyance. Lacey intervenes.

  “Complex how?”

  “Well, it seems that she was drawing on Mulligan’s memory banks to build a persona we could relate to. Now that all her own people are revived and on-planet, it’s getting hard for her to keep the mask up. I get the strong feeling that they’re a semi-collective intelligence, because they sure exert a pull on her. We probably won’t see much of her once they settle down in the tropics. Tell you, they may be kind of strange, but survivalists? Jeez, they wrote the book. Sandstorms? Fine, they love’em. Not a drop of water for a thousand kilometers? Swell, who needs it? I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they can eat rock.”

  “Far out.” Lacey finishes the last of her drink, decides against having another so soon after sunset, then wipes the bottom of the glass dry on her jeans and sets it down on the edge of her comp desk. “But you keep saying ‘strange’ and ‘complex’ and you dunt tell me how.”

  “Well, take this matter of her—well, of the being we were thinking of as her mate. In a way, he was. I mean, he was male, and they were going to lay eggs together, and all that. But he wasn’t really a separate person in our sense of the word.”

  “Say what?”

  “When one of their females is ready to lay an egg, it ripens in her ovipositor. Then, before it’s fertilized, this egg divides once into two separate zygotes. Get it? Then the male comes along. He produces two kinds of sperm, one for each zygote. One egg turns into a female, the other into a male, but remember, they started out as two halves of a whole, so all their genetic inheritance from the mother is identical. It’s the sperm type that makes all the difference. When they mature, the male is smaller, weaker, not too bright, and basically dependent on the female, because he’s stone-blind. Now, psionically speaking, he can’t send mental signal, or pick up other races, so most of what information he gets, he gets through her. But here’s the weird part—this pair of hatchlings grow up together and become mates when they’re old enough.”

  “But hey, talk about inbreeding! They’re still brother and sister!”

  “Not exactly. That damn bacterial symbiote has a role in their reproductive cycle along with everything else it does. It mutates the male embryo in the egg, scrambles his DNA, kind of, and adds genetic material that it’s picked up from other members of the tribe or clutch or whatever you want to call the groups these sentients live in.”

  “Very strange, yeah. But each mated pair, they’re still a lot alike?”

  “Hell yeah. Mrs. B. told me that losing her mate was like losing part of herself—no, I take that back. To her, it was losing part of herself. She wasn’t exactly mourning a lover and an equal, you see. More like the kind of grief you’d feel if you lost a kid mixed up with the outrage of being maimed. Y’know, if someone loses an arm or leg, you got to let them mourn it before you can fit the bionic one. Otherwise they just won’t grow the right neural connections, no matter how many shots you give’em. This is kind of like that.”

  Lacey decides to have a second drink after all and gets up, taking Carol’s empty glass along with hers down to the wet bar.

  “How many of her people survived?”

  “Perfect example of what I was just saying. She told us that there were four hundred sentients on the ship originally, right? Turns out there were four hundred pair—eight hundred individuals to our way of thinking. So one-hundred-ninety-four pair survived both the accident and being brought out of cold berth, plus another thirty or so individuals without pod-mates. I asked Mrs. B. if those guys could maybe pair off, and she was horribly shocked. Man, did I have to apologize! It turned out I’d said something obscene, I mean, we’re talking real hard-core filth here.”

  “No accounting for tastes, huh?” Lacey hands her the drink, then sits down again, swinging her feet up onto her desk. “I take it enough expedition members survived to start a colony down near the equator.”

  “More than enough, because if they want to, they can lay three or four eggs a year. And we’re getting a bargain. The Republic’s granting them full mining rights to all those mineral deposits not even our robotics can touch, and the right to live in the hell-holes around them, too. In return, we get exclusive trade rights with their home systems—they’ve settled a bunch of planets that no other race could possibly use. Most likely they’ll be willing to form a full alliance. The Republic, my dear, is going to just about triple in size. The Cons and the Lies can wipe their behinds on that, and let’s hope it scratches.”

  They toast the Republic, then drink in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the first chance at a little quiet that they’ve had in five days.

  “I dint hear about a possible alliance,” Lacey says at last. “Where’d you find that out?”

  “Al Bates.” Carol looks absently away. “We had dinner last night.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Say, another thing I want to tell you. Little Maria? I think I’ve got a scholarship all sewn up for her.”

  “Far out! She sure sounded like her night at the hospital was a revelation for her. Hey, do you really think she can make it through? I mean, it’s one thing to decide you want to be a paramedic, and another to learn all that stuff.”

  “No savvy, but she’s earned the right to try. You should’ve seen her, working the ward with Mulligan after he taught her to shoo those damn bacteria away or whatever the hell it was they were doing. He was moaning and groaning, and he couldn’t even look at the patients half the time, but she was real calm, man, reassuring each patient and explaining everything as best she could. Y’know, after the rotten life she’s led, I’ll bet that a few cases of Bugman’s Creep looked pretty tame. This scholarship includes a year of special tutoring at a prep school to get her math and reading up to speed. I figured you’d let her stay here for that.”

  “No problem, yeah. Nunks wants to develop her psionics, too, before the Institute snags her, so that’ll do fine.”

  “Give the kid enough hard work, and it’ll keep her out of trouble.”

  “It worked for us at her age, dint it? Say, how’s Little Joe?”

  “One hundred per cent okay. He’s talking about getting an honest job, though.”

  “Jeez, this thing must’ve really messed with his head.”

  Carol finishes the last of her drink in one gulp and looks at her chrono.

  “Got to run. I’ll check in with you tomorrow.”

  “Okay. Where you going now?”

  “Oh well.” Carol gets up, looking absently away. “Having lunch with Al Bates.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Carol is out the door before Lacey can think of a suitable comment. For a while she sits at her desk and looks out the window at the gaudy night sky; every now and then she says to herself, oh yeah? and smiles. Then she remembers that she ma
de a rash promise when it looked like the Lies were going to blow her out of the sky. On the off-chance that there are Gods of some sort in the galaxy, she decides she’d better keep it.

  oOo

  The National Institute of Psionics occupies five hectares on the north side of Polar City. In the middle of the landscaped grounds stands the main building, a rambling, one-story maze of white stucco and red-tiled roofs, dim corridors and shaded patios. As a common joke goes, if you can’t find your way around the building, then you aren’t psychic enough to belong there. The Director’s office is a big book-lined room with a beamed ceiling and a red-tiled floor that overlooks a particularly cool patio where a holo fountain spreads its illusory waters in a blue-and-white tiled basin. Those who love the Institute as an alma mater—and despite Mulligan’s views on the matter, most psychics do—remember this room fondly, with its comfortable furniture of real wood and leather, its collection of fine art on the walls and its state of the art comp unit, and tend to model their own condos after it. Mulligan has, predictably, always hated it, and the Director, too, a tall, thin graying Blanco named Dane Coleman.

  At the moment Coleman is leaning back in his chair behind his desk while Mulligan perches on the edge of a carved settee nearby and squirms.

  Successful< whole debriefingyou, Mrs. Bug both<< Now Institute in splendid position! All this new informationpsi techniques >moneygovernment grants>> big bucks someday/soon.

  Guess so. Glad to help. [faint sarcasm]

  [bewilderment] Jack, why you so angry with us now?
  Mulligan merely shrugs uneasily, because at root he’s not really sure why. Coleman leans forward in sincere concern.

  Jack >think about it>> All I ask now >you think overmy offer.

  Thanks BUT| not thanks. I not belonghere.

  I say: you do belong now >belong>> Someday you be a fine teacher/have the touch for it>> a little training>>> Think about it >here full time >>good salary, place to livesafe and clean >>respect, honor from students>>>

  Okay, I think> not promise now >>not promise nothing>>>

  Fine. All I ask now.

  When Mulligan stands up, Coleman follows and walks out with him. As they make their way along the halls, cool and dim, silent (to the ears) even though they pass groups of students and teachers, Mulligan finds himself wondering if he could teach for a living. He’s sure it would take years of training, no matter what Coleman thinks, but he knows that Nunks would be glad to help him. Yet to be some place every day at the same time, to dress up in respectable clothes and say only respectable things, to stick to daily lesson plans and meetings with students, to be as firm and cold with them as his teachers were with him—he feels the contempt of a wolf who sees a fat dog chained to a kennel. The Director picks up his thought and smiles.

  Not that bad >once you get used to it>>

  I mean no insult now >none>> Just not my style.

  Ah. You mean the responsibility. Not want> be responsible sure you >fail>>?

  Mulligan feels his face turn hot and starts walking faster. He can also feel the Director’s amusement, sharper than any laughter could be.

  And now you want a drink. >Never going to solve one damn thing>>

  It takes all Mulligan’s psionic skill to hide his sudden flash of pure rage. By then they’ve reached the wrought iron gates that lead back to the outside world. Mulligan pushes them open, then deliberately speaks aloud:

  “Look, man, I can’t hang around here, y’know. I got batting practice. It’s, like, the first day of the Park and Rec season.”

  But even as he jogs down the curving driveway under the gaudy flare of the night sky, he knows that Coleman is merely amused by his attempt at an insult.

  oOo

  Although Lacey could have Buddy call every antique dealer in Polar City and access their inventory to find her a pack of cards, she hates to ask him to find a present for his rival, especially a present that means the rival has won. Instead she leaves the warehouse around midnight and drives her skimmer over to McCovey Avenue, the main street in the most elegant shopping district of Polar City. Although she has over four hours before Mulligan’s game starts in a park across town, she begins to wonder if it’s going to be enough time when the first three antique dealers she finds can give her nothing but a blank stare at the mention of tear oh cards. Finally, about half an hour before game time, she comes across a small, cluttered shop down a side street. Right there in the window, among spine-bound books printed on paper and crocheted white poodles with big, baggy bellies that seem to be covers for some long-forgotten cylindrical object, she sees an open wooden box and in it a pack of cards, the top one turned over to reveal the blond man on the horse beside an ocean, the very image that indicated Mulligan himself.

  When she goes in, an elderly lizzie, his scales shiny and his hands twisted with age, walks slowly over to greet her.

  “That wooden box in the window?” Lacey says. “Are those tear oh cards in it?”

  “It’s pronounced tarot, actually. It’s francis.”

  “Say what?”

  “Francis. It’s an Old Earth language.”

  “Far out. Never heard of it before. You sure it’s a full deck?”

  “Let me get them for you, madam. You may certainly count them yourself.” And he smiles as if he knows damn well that she doesn’t have the least idea of how many there are supposed to be.

  “Good.” Lacey reaches inside her vest and pulls out the mysterious box that Little Joe Walker found and that Mrs. Bug insisted she take as a gift. “I’ll bet you’ve never seen one of these before. It’s an Enzebbeline artifact.”

  The lizzie’s yellow eyes gleam with sheer greed.

  “One of the new race? Ahem, I might, I suppose, have some slight interest in a barter. May I ask what function it serves?”

  “Sure. It’s a musical instrument. Each pair of keys turns a particular electronic tone pattern on or off, and once you get’em going, you vary them by putting pressure on the sides here.”

  In the midst of unearthly wails, the dealer smiles and settles in for a nice, enjoyable bargain.

  Although Lacey gets to the park late, she finds that fifty cents will still buy one of the best seats, just two rows up from the field on the first base line, right near the Marauders’ dugout. As she makes her way down the aisle with a crush-cup of beer in one hand and a soy-dog in the other, she estimates the crowd at only a thousand, scattered round the plastocrete stands. Even so, there’s someone in the seat next to her, a middle-aged business type in a buttoned white shirt and crisply creased gray shorts. When she sits down, he gives her a pleasant nod to acknowledge her existence, then begins to eat a kraut dog with delicate precision. Lacey puts her feet up on the back of the empty seat in front of her and sighs in contentment.

  It’s odd how a hot night always seems cooler at a ball park, even a Park and Rec diamond with nothing but semi-pro ball going on, as if simply watching a game takes you to a magic land where every problem is a little bit easier to solve and every pleasure a little more enjoyable. The soy-dog is juicy, the beer is cold, and out on the field the opposing team, the Kelly’s Bar and Grill Big Shots, are all business in their crisp white uniforms, the pitcher leaning in to scowl at her catcher as the Marauder currently at bat strolls to the plate. High above float the maglev light fixtures, beaming light carefully balanced to mimic long-gone Old Earth sunlight down over the synthigrass, each blade delicate and supple even though it was chemically extruded from the thick pad of plastofoam beneath. Everything about baseball, Lacey thinks, is perfect, or as the old proverb goes: twenty-seven point seven meters between bases is paradise.

  Lacey checks the scoreboard, finds out it’s the bottom of the third with two out, three to nothing Big Shots. The line-ups are listed to one side of the beaten-up and totally outmoded LCD board; in the Marauders’ column she finds Mulligan, number twenty-six and batti
ng fifth, an unusual spot for the shortstop. The crack of a bat jerks her back to the game, but the pitcher has merely fouled out to the third baseman: inning over. Laughing, shoving each other, the Marauders ramble out of the dug-out in their dirty gray uniforms striped with red, or rather, while they are all wearing uniform shirts, most are wearing blue jeans or baggy dark slacks with them. Lacey sighs again, thinking that Mulligan has found the team that suits him. Although she waves when she spots him, his back is to her as he trots out to the field.

  The Marauder pitcher takes his throws while the batter stands by, knocking imaginary mud from his cleats with the tip of his bat. Since organic grass is reserved for the major leagues, Lacey doubts that the guy has ever seen mud, much less played ball on it. When the batter steps in Mulligan fades back a little, but otherwise he and the team are playing straightaway. She has never seen Mulligan so intense and yet so much at ease as he waits, crouching, watching as the pitcher throws, a little high for ball one. The batter fouls away the next, then on the third sends an easy roller to short. Even though he has all the time in the world, Mulligan pounces on it, comes up throwing, and slashes it to first to get the runner by an easy meter. Even from her distance Lacey can see him smile, and she realizes, with a little twist of the heart, that this is the first time she’s ever seen him happy.

  When the next batter reaches first on a bloop single, Lacey expects Mulligan to move up to the edge of the grass in case of a bunt, but instead he fades way back, as does the third baseman. The mystery’s solved when the batter comes strolling up from the on-deck circle, a huge, long-armed dude whose enormous hands make the regulation bat look like one for children. The Big Shot side of the field goes wild, yelling, stamping their feet, chanting “Jim-my, Jim-my” over and over. Lacey happens to catch the business type’s eye.