B00BFVOGUI EBOK

by John Jackson Miller

  “Whatever,” Jamie said. “But before you get down to watching full episodes of Zazzy the Zoobear, tell me what they want. Our people are in trouble!”

  The Sheoruk waggled in something like a shrug. “I’ve never known them to want anything. Their lagoon teems with food, although we’ve never studied their digestive cycle.” Lorraine paused. “But they do seem to prefer some of the dried sponges on the beach. Perhaps your Zazzy bears are just the right composition for their palates.”

  “They offered to give me what was under the water,” Jamie said. “What’s down there?”

  “Nothing. They’ve said as much before — they have nothing of value down there at all.”

  Lorraine paused again, apparently thinking. Jamie had had an easy time imagining a persona for Lorraine back when she was a mystery figure in a wheel, but now, strangely, he was becoming accustomed to talking to a picture of an appendectomy. I’ve got to get out of this place, he thought for the hundredth time.

  “Things under the water!” Lorraine repeated. “It’s a strange thing for them to say. Are you sure the Baghu said it?”

  “Repeatedly!”

  “And Chief Yang — has she seen anything down there?”

  “She can’t,” Welligan said, snapping a power pack into his rifle as he walked up. “Look, we’re about out of time. I need to know what’s waiting for us down there.”

  “We don’t have any idea about the Baghu community beneath the surface,” Lorraine said. “They’re protective of their privacy. They don’t let anyone go farther out than wading on the shore. We haven’t made any attempts to go down there.”

  “They’re hiding something?” Welligan asked.

  “More like they’re — well, I don’t know how to put it. Ashamed of something, is more like it.”

  “You’re a research team,” Jamie said. “Haven’t you sent down a probe?”

  The glob shook. “Would you like an alien probe poking around where you live?”

  “No,” Jamie said. That was an entirely different nightmare.

  “But wait,” Lorraine said. “Are you intending to enter the water yourselves?”

  “Looks like we’re going to have to,” Welligan said. “We don’t want to.”

  Lorraine paused. “No, I don’t think you do,” she said. “But be aware of this: I don’t know how the Baghu will react to your incursion. And I don’t know what level of force you can apply without harming one. No one has ever tried. We don’t know what your weapons will do — and we don’t know what they will do in response.” The Sheoruk’s strange form glistened with moisture. “You could bring on a calamity on a planetary scale.”

  Welligan nodded, his expression grave. It jolted Jamie, who had never seen the man looking serious before. “I’m aware of that,” Welligan said. “But we don’t have any other choice.”

  Lorraine seemed to go limp. “I…I understand. The Sheoruk cannot stop you. But I implore you, use mercy.”

  “Mercy,” Jamie said. He snorted. “I don’t think they understand that.”

  “That’s just because you don’t share the same frame of reference, trader,” Lorraine said. “But every living being functions because of one thing: logic. Something makes their parts move. Something makes them behave as they do. If you don’t understand what they’re up to, it’s not because they’re illogical. It’s because you’re not thinking like a Baghu.”

  “Thanks for the help,” Jamie said, not meaning it. He really didn’t see any similarities between himself and a bunch of walking stomachs.

  Unless, of course, they too were feeling nauseated right now.

  17

  In her years as part of the expedition’s surge team, Geena Madaki had been like a mother to Bridget. Or grandmother — it was hard to tell any human’s age anymore. All Bridget knew was the soothing voice over the ultrasound receiver sounded like home.

  “We’re coming for you, Bridget. You sit tight.”

  “That will not be a problem,” Bridget said.

  It had been for some of her comrades, some of whom had wasted power trying to wrest free. Bridget hated feeling helpless, too, but she seldom thought she actually was helpless — including now. She’d been reviewing the Sheoruk researchers’ notes on the Baghu and their lagoon, and the tentacles before her face were as good as a tissue sample for her armor’s instruments. She just needed time to put it all together.

  And that time was running low. “Ten minutes,” Dinner said. His reserves were lowest.

  “We’ll be there,” Madaki said. “I’m putting Surge Three on the beach now.”

  Bridget inhaled deeply. Here goes nothing, she thought.

  * * *

  If Welligan was nervous about being all that was left to save his chief’s squad, Jamie thought the man was doing a good job of hiding it. His hair was, too. Inside his helmet, Hiro’s mop was a cool cinnamon, the EndoSys nanoids altering his follicles’ pigment to reflect his mood.

  Jamie’s space suit was fully on again. The port and starboard airlocks on the two personnel ’boxes that were part of Indispensable were open. Two gunners were stationed in each one. Behind the troops in each doorway was a portable turbine the size of a suitcase.

  “Pilot’s going to bring us in at ten meters and do a three-hundred-sixty-degree turn,” Welligan called out. “We hit the landing area with sonics — hit ’em directly if we have to. If they won’t budge, switch to nitros and put some rounds into them. We’ve already seen the pulse weapons don’t faze ’em.”

  Eyes wide, the trooper looked back at Jamie. “You’re gonna want to stay inside, Jamie. We don’t know what gases are in those Breathers. For all we know, they’ll go up like grenades.”

  Jamie nodded. He wasn’t planning on going near the exits — or even watching from the front. Welligan was going to open a landing spot on the beach and then tear a path down into the lagoon. Indispensable’s sensors had mapped enough of the body of liquid to reveal a sloping approach down into the undersea realm. Welligan’s team would simply walk underwater toting the turbines. They would use them to reach the captives — and to help bring back anyone they freed.

  There would likely be a big mess on the water afterward. Jamie didn’t want to see it.

  “Jamie Sturm!”

  Jamie looked back. From the controls of Indispensable, Madaki looked urgently back to him. “I’m hearing Bridget through the buoy. She wants to talk to you!”

  His eyes widened. “Me?”

  “Patch into Channel five sixty!”

  Jamie touched the number on his wrist. “Yang?” he asked.

  “Jamie!” Bridget’s voice was faint. “They do have something to trade!”

  “What?” Jamie had forgotten all about the trading mission.

  “I was right. They do have something to trade, but they don’t think so. You have to talk to them again!”

  Jamie’s head swam. “But they did say they had something. You’re not making any sense.”

  “Just shut up and listen! Remember—”

  The connection went silent.

  “Remember?” Jamie asked. “Remember what?”

  Madaki looked back and shook her head, sadly. “Her suit power’s too low. Either that or they’ve smashed the buoy.”

  From his position in the port airlock where he’d been listening, Welligan slapped the wall. “That’s it, then. Bring us down, Geena. Weapons live!”

  Bewildered, Jamie shook his head. His eyes searched the shuttle — and found the monitor showing the feed from below Indispensable. There was the throng of Baghu, bigger than ever. Stomping stomachs bustling all around the fabricator. But they hadn’t destroyed it, he noticed. Much less moved it.

  He had a thought. Quickly, he searched his suit’s recorder for the encounter.“We will trade you the things under the water,” the Breather had said. It repeated it again more slowly, and the human voice it was translated into spoke with seeming passion.“We will trade. We will!”

  Jamie cued it a
head — and listened to the Baghu calls from once he climbed atop the device. “We trade. We trade. We trade!”

  He thought back on Lorraine’s words about thinking like a Baghu.

  Could it really be that simple?

  Jamie bolted forward and grabbed Welligan’s arm, stopping the trooper in mid-countdown. “Stop! You’ve got to get me to the fabricator!”

  Welligan rolled his eyes. “I know you’ve got some money problems, but I think we’re going to have to write this mission off.”

  “No, I mean it,” Jamie said. He pulled again at his arm. “You get me down there!”

  “Jamie, I can’t—”

  “Yes, you can,” Jamie said, wedging himself into the narrow space remaining inside the airlock. He grabbed at his badge. “I’m the trader. While the trade mission’s on, you work for me. And I say it’s on!”

  Hiro looked at him, amazed. Then he turned and called out to his teammates on the opposite side. “Stand down,” he said. He looked back to Madaki. “Can you put us down on the fabricator?”

  “It’s where I picked him up from,” the pilot said. “Round trips are my specialty.”

  Indispensable lifted away from the intended landing site and hovered above the fabricator. Welligan stepped inside the open airlock door with Jamie, who clutched the ship for dear life.

  This is crazy, he thought, seeing the mad mass of aliens around. There was still time to change his mind, he thought — but instead he looked at Welligan and pointed down to where he needed to go. Welligan, hair flame red, nodded — and shoved.

  Jamie’s boots hit the roof of the fabricator with a thud. A tentacle from below lashed at him, and he slipped. Welligan landed on the other side of him, in perfect position to stop his fall. The trooper brought his rifle low and fired a sonic blast over the crowd closest to the fabricator’s side. It scattered the creatures for only a moment — but that was all the time Jamie needed. He heaved himself off the fabricator and onto the muddy surface below. Seeing the Breathers starting to close in again, he turned and fell against the device.

  It was the correct side. He found the manual override and punched the button.

  A teddy bear, already manufactured earlier, popped from the slot at his side. In an instant, the alien wave halted.

  “I trade,” Jamie said, his announcement echoing in the Baghu language. He looked to the Breather closest to him. “I trade,” he said again.

  The alien sniffed at the stuffed animal with its snout. Was it the leader Jamie had talked to in the beginning? Who could tell? All the trader knew was at that moment, the creature barked something even Lorraine’s vocabulary database couldn’t translate.

  And the mob fell still.

  “Something’s happening,” Madaki said over the audio linkup. Indispensable was still hovering overhead. “Something’s happening in the lagoon!”

  The Baghu waddled away from the fabricator, leaving Jamie an open path to the shoreline. Jamie looked up at Welligan, still atop the device, covering him. Hiro nodded. “I think they want you to take a look,” he said.

  Mystified at the scene — and amazed that he might be right — Jamie walked with the stuffed Zazzy through a corridor of Breathers. At the lake’s edge, he looked out to see a clear spot, free of bobbing Baghu, near where the buoy had been dropped.

  And a moment later he saw Arbutus Dinner break the surface of the brine, propelled upward by his Baghu captors. Captors that now carried him gently to the shore, before releasing him.

  The big man looked green. Jamie stepped up to him — and turned back to face the Baghu who’d made the sounds earlier. “You gave me the thing under the water. So I trade.” He passed the bear to the alien — and at once tentacles went up all across the beach. The Baghu whooped, jubilantly, as the leader thrust the stuffed toy high — before swallowing it, whole.

  “We trade,” said other Baghu, more calmly.

  “Not yet,” Jamie said, kneeling beside Dinner. “Welligan!”

  The squad leader was already on the move, hopping off the fabricator. Welligan dashed over and cleared a landing area at the water’s edge. The Breathers moved back, suddenly pliable. In moments, Dinner was back aboard the Indispensable, receiving emergency care.

  Jamie ran back to the fabricator and cycled it again. Another bear — and another member of Bridgie’s squad surfacing from below. He kept the machine operating at peak speed, worrying only that it would run out of whatever it made the bears from.

  Welligan stood by Jamie, watching now in wonderment as the team members reunited. “Teddy bear ransom!”

  “No,” Jamie said. “Trading — Baghu style.” He looked out at the aliens as his machine churned. “They didn’t think they had anything to trade with — so they grabbed something they thought we wanted — our own people!” He recalled what he’d heard in the recording. “Before they grabbed our people, they were saying they were willing to trade. Once they had them, they said they were ready — but I didn’t get it.”

  “Crazy!”

  “Yeh.” He pulled a final bear from the fabricator. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s all we’ve got.”

  “That’s all we need — Bridgie’s the last one down there.” Welligan opened a panel on the fabricator and turned a handle. With a whir, the sides of the massive device opened like petals, revealing its mechanical innards. The transformation seemed to puzzle the nearby Breathers. Welligan took the stuffed animal from Jamie and smiled. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to be the one that saves the chief.”

  “If you feel you really must,” Jamie said. He sat down on the sand and tried to remember how to breathe.

  * * *

  Walking up from the dark water, Bridget felt something like an ancient deity — only a goddess who’d lost her rifle. She saw what she expected when she emerged. With the fabricator cracked open, the Baghu had lost interest and dispersed. There were no more tasty bears inside.

  She spied Jamie standing on the shore. He’d found his battered briefcase and menu and was receiving accolades from the troopers preparing to move the fabricator to the shuttle. Approaching him, she moved her gloved hand — and what it held — behind her back.

  The trader looked at the dripping armored woman and smirked. “While you’ve been lounging around in the pool, I was saving the day.” Jamie eagerly explained his theory, omitting any suggestion that he had gotten the idea from her. She let him.

  “Oh, I don’t doubt you were right,” she said when he finished. “The Baghu didn’t think they had anything to sell, so they stole us. They’ve never traded in the history of their race — they probably didn’t get that stealing was wrong.” She raised an eyebrow at Jamie. “There are some civilized races that don’t get it.”

  “Hey!”

  Bridget smiled curtly. “But you didn’t get to hear what I figured out,” she said. “Here.” She pulled her hand from behind her back and presented Jamie what she had found in the water: a rocky mineral lump the size of a grapefruit.

  “What’s this?” Jamie said, looking it over.

  “Breather dung.”

  “Gah!” Jamie dropped it immediately.

  “I thought you loved money,” she said. “That there is probably worth a hundred thousand dollars on its own.” She reminded him of the gold flecks from the Breather’s tentacle. “Between the water composition down there and the close look I got at the Baghu holding me, my onboard computer was able to make a guess at the species’ body chemistry.” She knelt and picked up the nodule. “Pseudo feces, just like a mollusk puts out. The brine at the bottom is thick with gold chloride, among other things. Highly soluble — and it winds up in the Baghu, where it turns into these.”

  She shook herself off. “Once they let me go, I stayed down long enough to see hundreds of the things all over the lake floor.”

  Bridget tossed the dripping ball back into Jamie’s hands. He bobbled it but caught it this time. “Yecch!” he said. But he didn’t drop it.

  Bridget star
ted walking toward Indispensable. “That’s what I meant when I said they had something to trade — but they didn’t think they did. To them these things are nothing — something to be ashamed of. I think maybe that’s why they were so private about the lake. Hard to invite visitors in when you’re living in your own filth.” She stood in the doorway and looked back at him. “I think having all these down there was even making them sick. So they desperately want to trade.”

  Jamie looked back at the Breathers and nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll write a contract.”

  “You can clean up somebody else’s mess for a change,” Bridget said, stepping into the vessel. She thought for a moment about adding how one person’s crap was another person’s treasure — but, remembering how badly she wanted to pee somewhere other than in her armor, she decided to call it a day.

  18

  The Dragon’s Depot was really taking shape, Bridget thought. She and her team had returned to Sigma Draconis from Baghula to find the cavernous Shaft at the station’s center beginning to look like what it was supposed to be: a shipping terminus.

  She’d once visited a century-old automobile delivery silo at Autostadt in Germany. This looked like a zero-gravity version of that: ring after ring of storage receptacles on the inside walls of the cylindrical Shaft. Bangboxes imported from the whirlibangs would stay here, plugged securely in, waiting for their next destinations.

  The first batch of inventory was already in, relocated from ASPEC. It filled barely a twentieth of the storage space: the Dragon’s Depot was that large. Some of it would be leaving soon. Now that the trail had been blazed and the deal had been brokered, Administrator Falcone’s fulfillment crews would be taking material to Baghula to start Earth’s first interstellar teddy bear factory. The trade would make a sizable profit for the expedition, and the Zazzy rights holders would surely wonder where all the sudden licensing money was coming from.