Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by J F Bone

  The alien’s coughing stopped abruptly. Bruce fumbled in the pocket of his coveralls and found his flashlight. He turned the beam on the alien. It was dead; a thin trickle of blood ran from the lax mouth, and the goat’s eyes stared glassily.

  Bruce shrugged. By the time help came, he might be the only one alive.

  Actually, that might not be a bad thing. It would leave him as the only man who had experience with the aliens; and since he probably would be an international hero because of his incredible success against overwhelming odds, he would be asked to speak, and he’d be heard.

  He rose slowly to his feet and started walking back to the room the aliens had prepared for him. He would need the portable transceiver, and he might have to rig some sort of antenna that would let him broadcast. And as he walked he considered the stories he’d tell a waiting world.

  They would neither be kindly nor absolutely truthful. They would paint the aliens blacker than they were and make them into figures of terror. Considering their bizarre appearance, this should not be too hard to do. And since he was neither kindly nor absolutely truthful, he would be perfectly capable of watching his fellow men squirm as long as they squirmed in unison. He grinned at a thought which flashed across his mind. With some justice, he could be considered a hairy character. END

  1971

  THE SCENTS OF IT

  Love’s magicke spell blooms eternal everywhere . . . but can even a gourmand accept a world of loving lobsters?

  Mallory ap Banks paid me the ultimate insult of inattention, which was unbearable when added to the lesser insults of impatience and inappreciation. The trouble I had taken to look up the appropriate human references was lost on him and I could not help the anger that imparted a chartreuse tinge to my carapace and caused a mild glandular stimulation.

  My emotion was reciprocated. His face was engorged. “Discrimination!” he bellowed. “Just who in hell are you to talk about discrimination?” He shook a primary digit in front of my proboscis. “You goddam cannibals oughta be glad you got jobs. Hell—you don’t produce enough to earn six munits a week, let alone six an hour. And you, Qot, you’re worse than all the others. Just who do you think you are?”

  “I am Xar Qot, titular head of Quot lodgment, hereditary prime of the Qot gens, and assistant production manager at this plant.”

  “I’m the manager,” Mallory ap Banks grunted. “Just because you’re my assistant and the hereditary Poo-Bah of a low-income lodgment gives you no right to clack your mandibles about discrimination.”

  I thought he sounded a little like a repeat recording. Obviously I had struck a tender spot with the word discrimination. Humans, I have found, often over-react to certain key words. I suppose it is the lack of a long view. Everything is so immediate to them. After all, they are a parvenu race, and Mallory ap Banks, I’d wager, couldn’t be sure that his grandparents had a legitimate right to produce offspring. Compared to myself—who can trace my ancestry through two hundred generations—he was a social pigmy. I could have pitied him, had I not despised him.

  For two hours I bad patiently and logically explained to him that production records had nothing to do with pay or rating, and to tie them together was discriminatory, Stakhanovitic, antisocial, and in violation of the ethnic customs provisions of Title 10 of the Interworld Cultural Corps Regulations. I had always believed that ICC Regulations were the Corpsman’s Bible, but Samuel Mallory ap Banks would not listen. His mind was a mirror of his body; thick, stodgy, slow and boorish. His stubborn contempt for our customs made him a poor Corpsman, and a worse superior.

  “Besides discrimination, I also mentioned Stakhanovitic, anti—”

  He interrupted me. “Not again!” he groaned. “Stakhanovitc! Ha! Not even God could speed you bugs up. You’re the slowest workers in the universe!”

  “And Title 10—” I said.

  “You can take Title 10,” he snarled, “and shove it up—” His mouth closed abruptly and his eyes widened as he realized what he was saying. His hand shook as he reached for the bottle on his desk.

  There was ethanol in the bottle. He knew it was poison to my race, yet he persisted in drinking the stuff and exhaling the fumes on innocent Mallians.

  I moved back to avoid his breath.

  “Don’t turn away from me, you six-legged freak,” he shouted. “I’m the boss!”

  “Only because you are mated to the Planetary Coordinator’s oldest female offspring,” I said. “Although why that should give you preference is a mystery to me.”

  Mallory ap Banks clutched the bottle in one hand and shook the clenched primary digits of the other in front of my ocellae. “Out!” he bellowed. “Beat it!”

  I had no idea what he wanted me to beat, or whom, but I did not like his tone. My glands swelled with anger and frustration.

  Mallory ap Banks squirmed uncomfortably. “Goddam you!” he snarled, “you can’t do that to me!” His arm swung and the bottle in his hand came hurling at my head. Reflex retracted my antennae, but my body couldn’t move fast enough. The bottle struck my carapace near the dorsal edge, cracking the chitin of the first central plate as it caromed off and burst upon the floor. The fumes of ethanol filled the air. My senses reeled, and were it not for the pain of my cracked shell I would have fallen and perhaps died in the toxic puddle on the floor.

  I staggered from the office, a white hot streak of agony burning across my carapace; my trabeculae throbbing from the fumes of alcohol.

  He laughed as I fled frantically through the door. “Maybe now you’ll keep your goddam proboscis outa my business,” he chortled.

  He couldn’t have been more wrong. He had gone too far. Honor demanded I answer this attempt on my life. I would have to kill Mallory ap Banks, or remove him. To attack me with ethanol was an act that demanded revenge. I paused outside the office, for there is no sense in running farther than necessary, and cleared the fumes from my trabeculae.

  “For two munits I’d get outa here and leave this goddam sector to Georgie Banks and his mama,” Mallory ap Banks muttered to himself. The words came clearly through the open door, but I did not believe them. They were merely a soliloquy. He wouldn’t leave unless he was carried. He liked authority. He enjoyed giving orders. He liked feeling superior. He was a male authority figure; out of place in his own society. It infuriated him to realize that while females were restricted from Mallia, his position was inferior to most of the females who manned the ICC orbital station that continually circled our world. Were he a little more understanding or were I a little less ambitious, I would have sympathized with him. I had seen his mate once, a physical and mental counterpart of himself, and I did not wonder that he visited her reluctantly and infrequently.

  His voice became loud and bitter as he continued to ingest ethanol, and involved not only myself, but Kallia station, Mallia, the Feminist Party, the ICC and Earth itself.

  “Thank God for gin,” he said at last. “I couldn’t stand this friggin’ place without it.” He collapsed on his couch and filled the silence with stertorous breathing.

  I was amused. I couldn’t help recalling the Mallian proverb that an overactive stridulator gets quickly eaten.

  I twitched my wing muscles and turned off the camerecorder concealed under my carapace. The evidence I had accumulated since I installed the audiovisual recording device should send Mallory ap Banks clear back to Earth, wherever that might be. And when he was gone, I would take his place. ICC would not bring in another human, since they were phasing-out on Mallia, having done all the good and all the damage that their computers said Mallia could absorb.

  All I had to do was make a public record of my actions, visit George Banks, the Sector Agent, give him the camerecorder under seal, and prepare a formal complaint. I was pleased with myself. Samuel Mallory ap Banks would soon be an unpleasant memory.

  I announced my presence to the Mallian, a young Solq junior leader type, who crouched behind the reception desk in Banks’ outer office. He contacted Banks o
n the intercom, and in a moment I was through the inner door. Banks was seated behind his desk with a communicator in his hand. A single red light blinked on the desk console. He seemed uncomfortable. His energy reserve was low, his emotional index high, and his facial hair was visible.

  “Hello Xar,” he said. “What’s your problem?” He set the communicator in its receptacle and the red light blinked out.

  “Samuel Mallory ap Banks,” I said.

  “Mallory—eh,” Banks said and muttered something at audibility threshold. It sounded like “Omigawd.”

  “Well—what’s the matter with my brother-in-law this time?”

  “He threw ethanol at me, insulted the ICC, violated Title 10 of ICC Regulations, violated the ICC ethical code, used violence on low caste Mallian workers, insulted Mallian folkways, and in general behaved like a barbarian.”

  “That’s Sam, all right,” Banks said. “It’s enough to get him withdrawn if you can prove it.”

  “I am not a neuter,” I said. “I have proof.”

  “Congratulations—but I’d like to see it.”

  I pointed to my cracked carapace and waved my right front walking leg under his nose to let him smell the residual ethanol that had splashed upon it. “As you know, ethanol is poison to my race,” I said. “So that is assault with a deadly weapon.”

  “Supportive evidence, but not proof,” Banks said.

  “I have witnesses.”

  “Mallians?”

  “Yes.”

  “Forget it,” Banks said. “Both you and I and the ICC know you can buy all the witnesses you want for five munits each. A Mallian will lie to anything except a public recorder.”

  He was right, of course. Banks understood Mallians. “But that’s not all,” I said. I lifted my right wing case and showed him the camerecorder fitted into the alar cavity.

  It was embarrassing to expose myself, but it was necessary. “I have made it a matter of public record that I would deliver this instrument to you unopened,” I said.

  “You dared?” he asked. There was respect in his voice as he examined the device and the myoneural circuit that operated it. “The biocircuits are intact and haven’t been disturbed,” he said. “I’ll make a note of that. Now give me the recorder. I’ll put it under seal and request the tape be removed under security precautions and shown to a juridicial computer. That’ll make it a legal document.”

  “Your race goes to a great deal of trouble with this abstraction you call law,” I said as I gingerly removed the camerecorder. The muscle implants hurt as they came free.

  “You went to a great deal of danger to make a public recording,” Banks replied. “You know the penalty for false accusation. Didn’t you consider that the reviewing board will be human? How did you dare put your life in pawn?”

  “My honor is at stake,” I said. “And I trust your justice. I only fear your mother, the Planetary Coordinator, but she is only one among many.”

  “Don’t worry about Mama,” Banks said. “She’s honest If Mallory’s guilty, he’ll be removed.” He sighed and shrugged. “She never should have brought him here, but she worried about Sis. Sam just isn’t the type for working on Mallia.”

  The communicator buzzed and Banks picked it up. “Kallia Station, Sector Agent Banks,” he said. There was a pause and his voice changed when he spoke again. “I’m sorry Mama, but I have bad news for you,” he said. “I’m sending up a packet under seal and if it’s what I think it is, you’d better pull Sam out of here. He ran into a local named Qot—Xar Qot—yes—I think you know him. Anyway, Qot laid for him with an audiovisual recorder, and he’s got everything on tape. It’s been made public record down here. There’ll have to be a hearing . . .”

  “No, Mama. I don’t want the hearing; Qot does. And he’s made sure you’ll have to call it.”

  “No, Mama. I don’t think Sam has a chance. Qot is intelligent, and Sam isn’t . . .”

  “Yes, I know Mallians eat each other, but they don’t like to be kicked around. They have pride.”

  “Of course I know you want to help Sis, but Qot doesn’t care about that. He wants Sam’s job. He isn’t wealthy but he has a lot of prestige. His social status is Grade A. Maybe you can get Sam transferred to Ophiuchus.”

  “Yes, I know Ophiuchians evolved from crocodiles . . .”

  “Look, Mama; I’ve tried to protect him. He just won’t listen!”

  “No, I can’t stop things. They’ve gone too far. You’ll have to hold the hearing. Now why did you call me?” Banks listened for awhile. His face reddened briefly and then turned back to its normal color. “I know VIP’s are a problem, and I’m sorry to add Sam to your troubles. But we don’t have VIP quarters here. Did you try Wilberforce at Thamis Station? That’s where the action is.”

  “You did? And Wilberforce says they’re full? Ha! I personally know—”

  “Oh. One’s a woman eh? Well, that explains it. Sure, I can take them. There’s space here. Who are they?”

  “Marks! Hector Marks—and Shirley Copenhaver? Mama! You’ve gotta be kidding! ICC wouldn’t let them within parsecs of here. Look, Mama, I’ve got a hangup on Copenhaver and I despise Marks. Get me off the hook—please!” Banks continued to make protesting noises until the communicator shrieked at him. After that he was quiet, but his face was grim.

  “All right,” he said “send them down. But figure on taking Sam back. I’m not going to have both Sam and that pair on my neck at the same time. I’ll house them, but I disclaim any responsibility for them. They come at their own risk, and the Station won’t be responsible for their safety. And that’s going on the record.” Banks took his finger off the recorder switch and replaced the communicator.

  “Damn,” he said in a flat voice. “Helendamnation!” He eyed the communicator malevolently. “Well,” he continued, “At least I get rid of Sam Mallory. Incidentally, I don’t think you’d better be around when we pick him up. He’s liable to be violent.” He watched me as I laid my antennae back in the position of indifference. “Oh stop it,” he said. “You’re as interested in his leaving as I am . . . maybe more so.”

  “I will enjoy his absence and hope that it is permanent,” I said. “He knows nothing about Mallian psychology. Half our production problems were caused by his stupidity.”

  “And the other half by your maneuvering to get him fired?”

  “I can do a better job.”

  “I don’t doubt it, but what makes you feel you’ll take Sam’s place?”

  “ICC is phasing out, and I’m the logical successor. I get the position or I quit. And if I quit, ICC will have a dead plant on its inventory because three quarters of the workers will go with me. They’re Qots, and when their leader goes, they go.”

  Banks grinned. “The real mistake Sam made was not hiring some males from another lodgment to assassinate you, but he never did understand Mallians. But I can’t figure why you didn’t wait. In six months he’d have been phased out anyway.

  “I have to remove him. It is a matter of prestige. If anyone else removed him, I would be a follower rather than a leader, and I must lead.”

  “I wonder if we humans will ever understand you Mallians,” Banks said.

  “As long as your people and mine know we don’t understand each other we’ll get along fine,” I said. “The danger will come when we think we know each other.” He looked at me with his small simple eyes. I returned his stare with my compound ones. Finally he smiled. “I shall remember you,” he said.

  “I appreciate the honor.”

  “Just one word of warning,” he said. “Don’t go for my job too soon. Get some experience. Work at Sam’s job before you think of moving up.”

  “I have no intention of supplanting you,” I lied. “It would be too difficult. You have too much expertise and experience.”

  Banks grinned. There was something in his expression that told me he knew I was lying and that he wanted me to know he knew. I received the message, which surprised me greatly,
for unspoken communication between man and Mallian is rare. “Unless you need me,” I said, “I shall leave. I am weary, my carapace aches, and my wing muscles hurt I want some cement in my chitin and some ointment for my flesh.”

  “On your way to the infirmary, you might give some thought about how to get rid of Marks and Copenhaver,” Banks said. “It could be to your own benefit Those two are poison.”

  “Why doesn’t your mother refuse to let them land?”

  “She can’t She doesn’t have enough authority. Marks’ father is the exec-sec of the ICC planning board. His mother is chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee. No junior executive dares cross him. Shirley Copenhaver is a hereditary senator from General Dynamics and has a major interest in Interworld Industries. Interworld is always very helpful to its major stockholders. If anything, she’s more powerful than Hector.”

  “Even the most powerful meet with accidents,” I said. Banks shook his head. “No killing,” he said.

  “That complicates matters.”

  He nodded.

  I said farewell and stopped for a moment in the outer office to chat with the Solq, a bright young male named Kar. His gens was the branch related to Qot which made communication easy. “Kar,” I asked, “do you know anything about Hector Marks and Shirley Copenhaver? You were listening, and your desk console connects to central files. You wouldn’t be a true Solq if you didn’t inform yourself about these two.”

  Kar Solq’s ocellae flickered in pleasure at my compliment. “They are ethologists—scientists who study customs and morals of other cultures than their own.”

  “A harmless pursuit,” I said.

  “No sir; a dangerous pursuit, particularly when those two are involved. Each of them has destroyed a culture.” Kar smoothed his antennae. “Marks destroyed Kalfastoban IV, a world which was much like ours except that the inhabitants looked more like humans. Their culture was based on removal of top-level personnel by formal combat. The lower levels changed by bribery, assassination, and occasionally election.”