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Chapter Nine

 

1

At the top of the stairs, Retief entered a long corridor leading toward the back of the warehouse. There, a pair of GOSH goons stood coin-flipping guard in front of a door with black lettering in three different languages on its frosted glass panel. The words in Standard read:

 

private—no admittance. go away.
yeah, pally, dis means you, see? 

 

"Hold it right there, fella," the ichi-man on the right said, holding up a hand. "You ain't s'posed to be up here, see?"

"Yeah," the other amended. "Youz ain't—zzzzt!— supposed t'be here, see?"

"I didn't realize you boys came in matched sets," Retief said, looking from one to the other. "I'm here to see Mr. Bug. Is he in?"

"Not to you, lobster-boy." Zzzzt! "See?"

"I think he'll want to see me."

"Yeah? And who are you, pally? See?"

"I'm Captain Hollishkes," Retief told them. "What are your names?"

"I'm Sixty-five," the ichi-man on the left said. "See?"

"Yeah, an' I'm Toity-tree, see?"

"I do see. Sixty-five, Thirty-three . . . wait paren close paren semicolon."

The GOSH robot on the left went glassy-eyed, the coin bouncing off his frozen-in-place hand and falling to the floor, but the other snapped out his arm and caught Retief by the throat.

"Da name's 'Toity-tree,' see? An' yours is—zzzzt!—dead meat . . . see?"

With superhuman strength, the robot's fingers tightened on the flexible neck guard of Retief's Krll battle armor, squeezing with brutal, crushing force as it lifted his six-four frame clear of the floor. Retief tried to speak, but as the neck guard began to collapse against his throat, he could not make a sound more coherent than a strangled gurgle. The GOSH robot's grip tightened. . . .

Releasing the ichi-man's wrist, Retief threw as powerful a punch as he could, landing it squarely on the side of the robot's head. Dangling awkwardly in the air, without solid footing, he couldn't deliver much power. The hard, rubbery surface of the machine's synthflesh absorbed the blow, and the only damage was to Retief's knuckles. He swung again, a hard, stinging left . . . but with absolutely zero effect. His kicks landed on the machine's armored torso with no more effect than a gentle nudge. He tried jamming both of his thumbs, held rigidly side by side, into the ichi-man's eyes, trying to blind it, to distract it even for a moment, but the glassy orbs apparently were armored in anticipation of such an attack. All that happened was that the syndicate robot's eyes appeared to glow a bit, as if with anticipation.

One more thing to try. Reaching up behind his head, Retief hit the release lever on his helmet, then yanked it forward and off his head. Hinged to the front torso of his armor, it flipped down, opening the suit from neck to crotch.

Retief pulled his legs and arms free and dropped backward onto the floor, leaving the ichi-man still strangling a now-empty suit of armor.

He tried to speak again but only managed a harsh and unintelligible croak. The ichi-man tossed the empty armor aside with a pots-and-pans clatter, and advanced on Retief, arms outstretched.

Retief rolled aside, swinging his legs around, catching the robot's ankles and sweeping its legs out from beneath it. The GOSH thug fell full length on the floor with a thunderous crash. Instantly, Retief was astride the machine's back, pinning one wrist between the ichi-man's artificial shoulder blades. The machine was strong, terribly strong, and the muscles in Retief's arms bulged with the strain as servomotors whined in overheated protest.

Retief cleared his throat, put his mouth by the struggling robot's ear, and said, "Toity-tree, wait paren close paren semicolon."

The made man froze in place, unmoving, its arm still locked rigidly at its back. Retief arose, straightened his black commando garb, and ruefully massaged his bruised throat. "Looks like that's an ichi you can't reach," he said. Both robots remained frozen, one standing, the other prone. With a C++ wait command, with no number within the parentheses, they would remain that way, unmoving and unresponsive, until someone gave them a new command.

And since that command might come at any moment via radio from some central control center, Retief decided not to take the time to don the Krll armor again. It had been useful so far, but it was uncomfortable, hot, and it cramped his style.

He snatched a small power pistol of Groaci manufacture from the standing robot's shoulder holster, straightened the machine's tie and technofedora, then leaned hard on the door, and walked in.

 

 

 

 

2

"Hey!" a shrill little-girl's voice chirped. "What's the matter? Can'tcha read?"

The speaker was a large Krll resting in a water-filled pan atop a broad desk of richly stained copperwood. Two smaller Krlls, with gaudy gold carapace paint and prominent thoracic knobs, appeared to be preening the being's antennae with their anterior claws.

A half-dozen GOSH thugs, both human and artificial, started to close in on Retief from all sides, hands reaching for holstered weapons inside cheap suit coats. Retief raised his own pistol and squeezed off a brief burst, hitting the water in the pan an inch from the big Krll's left fore claw with a sharp, sizzling hiss and a puff of steam.

"Yowch! Hey! Watch it with that thing!"

"Call off your boys, Mr. Bug, or there'll be boiled lobster tail on the menu tonight, and you'll be the featured selection."

"All right! All right!" the being squeaked. "Just take it easy! You heard the alien, boys. Put up your heaters."

"Drop your guns on the floor," Retief added. "Move slow and keep your hands where I can see them . . . or your boss gets cooked."

"Do what he says! Do what he says!"

Reluctantly, the syndicate hoods deposited a pile of hardware on the floor in front of the desk, power pistols, lasers, antique slug throwers, two light rocket launchers, a small flamethrower, and a few grenades.

"Quite an arsenal there," Retief commented. "Are you planning on invading someone, Mr. Bug?"

"What's it to ya, Terry?" The Krll regarded Retief for a moment with beady, stalked eyes, then said, "Beat it girls. I got business t' take care of."

The two smaller Krll skittered off the desk and out of the room, claws clicking quickly across the floor. The GOSH boss seemed to have recovered some of his aplomb. Reaching out of the tub, he flipped open a humidor, extracted a large cigar, and snipped off the tip with a fighting claw. "So," he said, puffing the cigar alight. "You took a helluva big risk comin' up here, Terry. Whatcha want? A cut of the take? A piece of the action?"

"Something like that. You can start by filling me in on your scam. What are you doing here, anyway?"

"Hey, I'm just a simple businessman, eking out a precarious living selling a little of this . . . a little of that."

"Uh-huh. And the fact that some of that is illegal just adds spice to the game, right?"

"Illegal?" the Krll squeaked. "Illegal? By whose rules, illegal? You Terries? What's so-called illegal to you barbarians is simple business to us, and the so-called Concordiat's so-called blockade on certain comestibles ain't nothing but blatant restraint of free trade!"

"I see your point." With his free hand, Retief extracted a perfumed dopestick from his chest pocket and struck it alight. "Terrible when you have to deal with the riffraff, isn't it?"

"You said it. Ol' Kreplach has the right idea. Conquer all of you, put you to useful work, and bring you civilization and enlightenment . . . at least as much as you uncivilized types can handle."

"Interesting. What is your definition of civilized, anyway?"

"Well, lessee. You got your readin' and your writin' and your higher math. You know, two divided by the negative square root of zero, stuff like that."

"Yes . . ."

"You got your basic tools like the screw-U and the disinclined plane. You got your basic ability to build tall buildings and parking lots and shopping malls, and to tell Mother Nature where she can get off. Oh, and of course there's the ability to wage war on a planetary scale."

Retief puffed at the dopestick. "So far it sounds uncomfortably like us Terries."

"You're forgettin' the most important Law of Civilization."

"Oh? What's that?"

"Bottom feeders are on top."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You eat other living creatures," the gangster boss bellowed.

"You mean meat?"

"Yeah, I mean meat! Where do you think meat comes from, dummy? You think it grows on trees? Now, if the meat is already dead when it drifts down to the bottom, that's fine. The riper the better, right? Or plants. Veggies is okay. But you barbarians kill other creatures, cook them, and then eat them!" He waved a claw as Retief blew a cloud of scented smoke. "Hey! What's that stuff you're breathing?"

"Not joyweed, if that's what you're afraid of."

"Hey, us Krll ain't afraid of nuttin'! But, uh, yeah, we don't like that native foo-foo stuff."

"Understandable, since it seems to slow Krll metabolism to a crawl." He glanced around the room. Mr. Bug's guards and toadies stood in a nervous huddle in a far corner, watching the interview. The Krll was far too confident, had been, ever since the conversation had begun. "So Terries aren't civilized because they eat meat."

"Bingo! Maybe you Terries ain't as dumb as you look."

"What about the natives of this planet? They're plant eaters. But I heard Kreplach express the sentiment that Odiousita V wasn't even inhabited."

"Well, it ain't. Not by civilized folks, anyway. The highest form of life here eats plants, yeah, but they don't have space travel and they don't build buildings. They grow them. A race of dumb-bunny farmers and janitors, is what they are. Us Krll are light-years ahead of them in the civilized arts."

"I see. And Terries?"

"As I see it, you Terries has got potential. You could be trained. A few thousand years under our benevolent but firm rule, condition you to eat garbage like civilized folks, and you might make somethin' of yourselves. Assuming we can break you of some of your more unsavory habits."

"Like eating fresh meat."

"Exactly."

Retief walked around the room. On one wall was a seven-foot-tall velvet painting in rather poor taste of a Krll in battle armor, shown life-sized, standing astride a pile of smoking bodies, waving a black Krll flag. Apparently, the Krll warrior's headlight was out. Nothing showed in the helmet but a black slit.

"You know, I'd be more convinced if you sounded more like a businessman, and less like a politician or a social scientist. What does a 'simple businessman' care about civilizing uncivilized natives?"

"Well, there's the market to consider, right? And your blockade is, like, restraining our free trade and all, and keeping us from settling old scores with those damned eight-legged nightmare ogres next door! We will destroy them, crush them, mangle them! We will burn their cities and enslave their shes! We—" The Krll stopped, its antennae wigwagging furiously. "Uh, I mean . . . it keeps us from pursuing our lawful pursuits in the Cluster!"

"By 'damned eight-legged nightmare ogres,'" Retief said slowly, drawing on his dopestick, "I assume you mean the B'ruklians."

"What if I do?" the being said, its chirping voice again carefully neutral. "They ain't civilized neither. When we conquer them, we'll probably save a few of the more docile ones to breed as beasts of burden."

"Uh-huh. They don't have space travel . . . and with those crocodile jaws and rows of sharp needle teeth, they certainly aren't vegetarians. Two strikes against them." He drew another deep lungful of scented smoke from his dopestick. "But . . . you know something interesting? I don't think the B'ruklians of B'rukley are native to that planet."

"Uh . . . so what? I mean, what makes you say that?"

"Have you ever seen one?"

The Krll seemed to shrug with its antennae. "Doesn't matter if I have."

"Hmm. They have this thick, tough hide." Retief held up a thumb and forefinger, an inch apart. "Must be this thick. And it's dark colored, black or dark gray or brown. Good protection against the radiation from a hot, bright star. The thing is, Firstsun, as they call their primary, is a cool red star. Almost no ultraviolet component to the stellar output at all."

"Yeah? So what? I never went in for astrology."

"Astronomy. Here's another thing. They're solidly built, with eight legs and a low center of gravity. Heavy musculature. Almost as if they evolved on a high-gravity planet. But B'rukley has a gravitational field of only about nine-tenths of a G. You'd expect life forms native to the place to be taller, more willowy . . . not built like a tank."

"So what do I care about a bunch of ugly alien barbarians, huh?"

"Okay, let's talk about the Krll."

"Hey! Now you're getting' personal!"

"Obviously, you folks evolved in the ocean, where the planet's gravity field doesn't matter so much. It would affect the water pressure, of course. The fact that you've adapted well to life out of the water means you didn't evolve in a high-pressure environment. If you had, you'd explode when you approached the surface. Also, the coloration of your carapace suggests you got a fair share of sunlight where you grew up. A deep-benthic life-form would tend to be colorless or even transparent."

"Listen, I don't like the way this is goin'."

"So, my guess would be that the Krll evolved from bottom-feeder crustaceans in warm, shallow seas—"

"You watch that 'bottom-feeder' stuff! Us Krll is top of the old food chain, you get it?"

" . . . maybe on coral reefs, maybe in a shallow, inland sea, but either way, close to land. The question is what the evolutionary impetus was that drove you to develop a technic civilization. Fire, mining and smelting, internal combustion engines, electronics, rocketry . . . you would need to work out all of those, and more, before you developed spaceflight, and you couldn't do that if you were strictly an oceanic species. You must have crawled up on shore a lot, maybe to feed or maybe to escape oceangoing predators."

"Now you're startin' to talk dirty. You watch your buccal opening!"

"If you evolved in an inland sea," Retief went on, "you might've been forced to come ashore as the sea slowly dried up. But my guess is that there were predators, both in the ocean and on the land. Something big and something nasty, that liked to eat Krll."

"Nobody eats Krll and gets away with it!" the crustacean squealed. "Nobody! We'll trample them! We'll smash them! We'll burn their—"

"Yes, yes, we've been over that already. These predators must've been pretty efficient. Probably they were as sentient as the Krll were, or more so."

"That's a damned speciesist lie!"

"The Krll were forced to develop intelligence and, later, a technic civilization, just to survive. To keep from being eaten into extinction."

"I'm warning you—"

"I consider myself warned. What's also interesting is that the Krll appear to have developed quite a nasty racial inferiority complex along the way."

"We are not inferior! We are by divine right the supreme overlords of the Galaxy!"

"You had to prove you were better than your predatory enemies. You had to conquer them, trample them, and so on and so forth just to convince yourself that you were their equals . . . or their betters. Gave you fellows a mighty big chip on the shoulder and a distinctly black-and-white picture of the universe. I'd guess that after a few thousand years of warfare, you managed to get the upper hand . . ."

"Upper claw!"

" . . . and chased the predators right off the planet."

"We exterminated them! We drove the hell-fiends to the extinction they so richly deserved! . . ."

"Well, you got all the ones still on your planet, but some of them escaped your claws, didn't they? This hypothetical predator species must have already developed star travel by the time you took over. Maybe they just decided to migrate elsewhere and leave the homeworld to you."

"The fiends thought they could escape us! 'Vermin,' they called us! We started off as hors d'oeuvres, but then we became vermin! But we will have our just revenge!"

"How long ago was that, anyway? How many thousands of years, while you Krll developed a dry-land technology, learned the secrets of metallurgy and spaceflight, and finally set out to find the monsters who'd left such a deep impression on your racial memory?"

"Too long . . ."

"Long enough for the predators to become relegated to folklore and fairy tales, the sort of boogie man you use to scare your larvae into behaving themselves. I'll bet it was a real shock to find the living reality when your long-range interstellar scouts first discovered B'rukley."

"Whoa. Now you're getting into the area of state secrets, fella."

"By that time, a lot of you probably didn't even believe the monsters existed in real life. And here you found them alive and well, teaching school and sharing the mysteries of the Holy Mystic Fortune Cookies on B'rukley. That discovery probably jangled the alarm bells in every Krll in the Shamballa Cluster."

"For your information, we call it the 'Great Awakening.' It was the moment when we discovered our true destiny in the universe!"

"And what was that?"

"Why, to rid the Galaxy of the hell-fiends once and for all! And, just incidentally, to assume our rightful place as lords of all creation!"

"So . . . there on B'rukley is the one species guaranteed to drive Krll nuts, singly and collectively. You're not strong enough to invade at that point. You're probably pretty new to star travel. Your homeworld is in the Cluster, isn't it? Not somewhere off in the Galactic Core. That was a story to throw your enemies and potential enemies off track."

"That's classified!"

"The B'ruklians were probably a bit more advanced technologically than you, too. They'd had star travel longer than you, after all. Maybe you just weren't sure how advanced they were . . . in the area of military weapons, for instance." He pulled on the last stub of his dopestick, burning it to extinction. He snubbed out the butt in Mr. Bug's pan of water.

"Hey!"

"For all you knew, as soon as you appeared, they'd eat you for dinner."

"I warned you about that dirty language, Terry!"

"After all, the Krll have an inborn terror of being eaten by things bigger than you. Am I right?"

"Enough! Enough already!"

"You couldn't know that once the B'ruklians had colonized B'rukley, they'd actually given up on star travel and settled down to a nice, sedentary decline, maintaining just enough technology to let them enjoy the good life." Retief reached into his pocket and produced the half-burned joint of joyweed, left over from when he'd taken down Captain Hollishkes in the elevator. "So you looked around and found a likely planet right next door, orbiting a star a lot like your home sun, probably with a climate a lot like home, and began hatching your plot. Just when did the Groaci put in an appearance, anyway?" He puffed the joint alight.

"None of your business!"

"You needed the Groaci to help you in the military department. Ships. Weapons. Armored suits. Even the big warwalkers. Most of it either Bogan or Groaci manufacture, and with Groaci electronics driving them, including the neural transceivers that allow you to control the machinery. I wonder. Did the Groaci come along and take you on as clients when you were still planet-bound on your homeworld?"

"You've learned more than enough, Terry spy! Now it's your turn to answer questions . . . after which we conduct a colorful execution!"

"Really? I thought I had the gun?"

"Do you think a Krll of my exalted rank, as head of the Krll Secret and Nefarious Activities Agency, would be unguarded? Pitiful fool!" He waved a claw. "Behold your doom!"

"You mean the concealed gun slit disguised as part of that painting?"

He drew in a mouthful of smoke, careful not to inhale it, and blew it out in a stream directly into Mr. Bug's face. The Krll gagged and sputtered, but his movements slowed almost at once. With an audible pop, a gun barrel poked its way through the painting, right at the black slit in the figure's helmet, but Retief was already in motion, scooping Mr. Bug from the water pan with his free hand and holding him up as a shield.

"Don't shoot, unless you want to fry your boss!"

The gun in the wall waggled uncertainly. One of the disarmed thugs in the corner lunged for one of the weapons on the floor. Retief snapped off a shot that half melted the pistol as he picked it up, making him yelp and hold his burned fingers to his mouth.

Retief leaped to the wall next to the painting, too close, now, for the concealed gunner to bring his weapon to bear. He took the smoking joyweed joint from his mouth and flipped it through the gun port, then backed toward the door, still holding the slowly squirming lobster in front of him. The gun in the painting tracked after him . . . but slowly now, almost sluggishly. A moment later, the painting bulged, then tore, and an armored Krll soldier burst through, staggering a bit and waving at the smoke billowing around him. Retief fired twice, taking out the suit's knees and sending the suit toppling onto the floor.

The gangsters surged toward him, some already scooping up guns. Retief tossed Mr. Bug straight at them, then ducked through the door.

Somewhere, an alarm was shrilling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3

Pounding down the stairs, Retief reached the warehouse floor and jogged for the door. Around him, female Krll waved their antennae in consternation within their tanks. "It's me, girls," he told them. "Don't tell anyone. I'm in disguise."

"Sure you don't want to take off that horrible scare-suit and join us in here?" one of the Krll cooed.

"Not today, thanks."

Outside, the warehouse area was coming alive with Krll soldiers and vehicles racing about in a remarkable impression of a kicked-over anthill. Apparently, Mr. Bug had regular troops at his command as well as GOSH thugs. What had he called himself? Head of the Krll Secret and Nefarious Activities Agency? That made him Shtliff's opposite number and explained his covert connection with the Krll military. But it also meant that getting out of this place was going to take some real doing.

"There's the Terry!" a rumbling voice called. "Get him!"

Power-gun bolts sizzled past Retief's head, melting fist-sized craters in the warehouse wall at his back. Retief fired back, forcing his pursuers to duck, then ran for it, ducking into an alley between two warehouse buildings and making for the perimeter fence.

Glap-glupp said to yell if I needed help, Retief thought. I'm not sure what he could do, though. . . .

Just keep running in the same direction you're going now, Retief, a deep-voiced thought sounded in his head. We'll get you out. 

Glap-glupp?

I told you we have a deal, Retief. We help you. You get these civilized foreigners to see reason. Right? 

Right now they're not being very reasonable, Retief told the disembodied thought. Don't do anything rash . . . like getting yourselves shot.

Don't worry about us. Just . . . get down! 

Retief dropped to the ground and rolled. Twenty feet in front of him, an armored figure stepped out from behind the corner of the warehouse, firing wildly, sending a volley of close-spaced energy bolts sizzling through the air just above him. Retief brought his pistol up as the soldier adjusted his aim. . . .

The chain-link fence at the Krll soldier's back shuddered violently, bulging inward. The soldier heard the clatter and turned, throwing up his arms as the fifteen-foot-high fence ripped free of its embedded concrete supports and flattened the Krll trooper like a giant flyswatter. Dozens of Bloggies, massive, six-leg-armed, and angry, surged in over the fallen fence and the downed soldier. One waved a leg-arm, urging him on. Let's go, Retief! They've got some heap-big war machines on the way, and we can't tangle with those babies! 

Retief dashed over the fallen fence. The woods beyond, he saw, were filled with Bloggies. He could hear them now, in his mind, a kind of low-voiced murmuring as he picked up the fringes of their telepathic link.

"I took the liberty of rounding up a few of our guys, Retief," one of the Bloggies told him, speaking aloud instead of in his head. "Whatcha think? Can we take them down now?"

"Glap-glopp?"

"Nah. I'm his eighteenth cousin, forty-seven times removed. Schlup-shlupp's the name."

"Good to meet you." A powerful energy bolt exploded like lightning among the trees, setting one aflame. The towering shape of a Krll warwalker appeared in the alley between the warehouses, a light proton cannon mounted on its right arm. It fired again, a badly aimed bolt that took out a corner of a warehouse and sent burning debris showering into the woods. The Bloggie army wavered.

"We can't face artillery like that without weapons and armor, Schlup-shlupp," he said. "Pull your guys back. We need to find another way to take on the Krll army."

"I was kind of hoping you'd say that." Okay, everybody! the thought burned in Retief's brain. Fall back! Fall back! Scatter into the woods! Meet at the Rendezvous Point as soon as you can manage it! 

The Bloggies could move, Retief saw, with remarkable speed for beings so massive. The native army was already melting away into the forest.

"Climb aboard, Retief," Schlup-shlupp said, offering a leg-arm. "We can travel faster if you ride."

"Much obliged, Schlup-shlupp." He scrambled up the gnarled and leathery surface of the leg-arm and clung to the humped top of the being. Krll soldiers were spilling out of the warehouse area now and entering the burning woods, with the towering hulk of the warwalker striding above them. Krll voices called to one another. Energy bolts hissed and snapped through the air.

"Hang on, Retief. The ride could get a little rough."

He clung tighter to the leathery folds of the Bloggie's hide as the being leaned in one direction and began rippling its six leg-arms in a complex dance too quick for the human eye to follow or make sense of. Controlling that kind of muscular coordination, Retief thought, required an incredibly powerful brain and nervous system. Telepathic communication might be only one of the side benefits of such a brain.

There's a lot more to you Bloggies than meets the eye, Retief thought as the being rippled its way through the forest at the speed of a galloping horse. Trees flashed by on either side, and branches lashed at his back. He leaned closer to his strange mount, clinging more tightly.

Don't know what you mean, Retief, the being's thought came back. We're just us, simple, sentient beings trying to understand what you aliens mean by "civilization." 

"Right now I wouldn't worry about civilization," Retief replied aloud. "We need to find a way to save you from civilization, Krll-style . . . and after that there's still the Terries to think about."

One worry at a time, Retief, replied the being's thought. One worry at a time . . .

 

 

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