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Chapter Seven

 

1

Retief came groggily to in the open flatbed of a Krll military hovercraft transport. Half a dozen armored forms sat around him, deadly looking blast rifles trained on him. Each was perhaps seven feet tall. Their helmets were fitted with ornate decorations that resembled wings or possibly art-deco fins to either side, deeply recessed eye slits within which lone red lights glowed balefully, and a complex arrangement of breathing grates or filters where a human nose and mouth would be. This last was interesting. To judge by the hiss and rasp coming from each, these Krll soldiers breathed a standard oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere mix.

All of the six had peculiar emblems on the brows of their helmets, gold and jaggedly angular. Retief decided it must be some sort of emblem of rank—the mark of an officer or an NCO, perhaps.

"The monster is waking up," one of them said, his harsh, guttural speech translated by the electronics woven into Retief's commando suit.

"Watch him, Rifle-Sergeant!" said another.

"I wonder if you boys would mind pointing those things somewhere else," Retief said agreeably. He sat up slowly, not making any quick movements. His helmet and, of course, his power pistol, were gone. "Silence, monster!" the first Krll snapped. "Save it for your interrogators!"

The gleaming metallic individuals around him all showed a body language that mingled extreme alertness with a fear that bordered on terror. In Retief's experience, nervousness and guns did not at all mix well.

Since there seemed to be little point in continuing the conversation, Retief took the time to observe his surroundings. The hovercraft was whining along a well-trodden dirt road. Evidently, they'd traveled north up the highway leading to the Krll headquarters fortress, which was now visible ahead, ablaze with lights. Soon, the hovercraft turned off the main road and drifted toward the looming maw of the fortress gate. Behind, the towering form of the Zuuba-class combat machine strode through the dust hurled up by the hovercraft's fans, walking escort for the transport and its prisoner with heavy footfalls that echoed hollowly off the fortress parapets.

Through the outer gates, then, and into a barbican lined with ranks of silver-armored figures before passing on through the inner gate and into the fortress proper. Here was a cavernous space filled with heavy equipment and vehicles, overhead traveling cranes, crisscrossing elevated walkways, and the titanic loom of black-painted warwalkers, parked silent and lifeless within their gantry cradles and access scaffolding. The ceiling was easily sixty feet above the busy floor, high enough to allow even the largest of the ponderous walkers to come and go through the main gates. The din within the place, like the clangor within a heavy machine factory or mill, echoed from the walls and assaulted the ears.

A number of Krll were visible, most apparently maintenance personnel at work servicing both vehicles and walkers. All, Retief noticed, without exception, were armored and helmeted, even here, within their fortress fastness.

It was almost as if they didn't want outsiders to see their faces.

Only a few possessed the angular gold insignia of his captors.

"Don't you guys ever kick back and relax?" Retief asked his guards in a conversational tone. "Take off your environment suits and go swimming . . . maybe play golf . . . or play hooky. . . ."

"Silence, monster!"

"It's just that those helmets you wear look awfully heavy. And judging from all that hissing, you breathe this air just fine. Can't be the brightness of the local sun, since you come from the Core where things are a lot hotter than this, at least when it comes to UV and hard radiation."

"You don't understand, Terry," one of the guards said. "These suits aren't just for—"

"Shut your fraggech hole, Spear-Corporal Lekach, or s'whelp me you'll be scrubbing out the drungleglag hoppers with your snurf organs for the rest of the deployment! You hear me?"

"Yeah, Hyper-Lieutenant," the chastened being replied. "Sure."

"And as for you, Terry monster . . . you be quiet if you don't want the rough stuff to begin right here and now! You get me?"

"Absolutely, Hyper-Lieutenant," Retief replied. "I was just wondering why all the hostility. You caught me, fair and square. Why can't we have a friendly chat?"

"Krll don't have friendly chats with Terry monsters! That's one thing. For another, your friends just dropped a bag of terror-propaganda and squashed poor Club-Corporal Latke flat as a skrugblatt. Now, maybe you just happened along . . . and maybe you was up on that hilltop guiding that ordnance in with a laser pointer or something equally fiendish. Either way, I'd just as soon gut you and string you up to dry as look at ya! Ah. Here we are. Out, you, and no fast moves!"

The hover transport had pulled up at a loading dock in the cavernous vehicle bay. Armored soldiers lined both sides of a corridor leading back into the deeps of the fortress. The Krll sergeant marched him at gunpoint past the watching ranks, zigzagged through a number of stone corridors, and deposited him at last in a cell with a pile of straw, a barely functional glow panel on the ceiling, an iron door, and no other amenities. Five humans huddled in the far corner, just visible in the dim light.

"You can cool your fubfelbs in there, monster," the lieutenant growled at him, "along with others of your kind. Maybe we'll come get you later, and maybe we won't. In the meantime, you think up all the lies you want to try on our interrogation teams before they break you! Ta!"

The door clanged shut at Retief's back.

"This getting locked into small rooms is becoming something of a habit," Retief said aloud.

"You'll, like, get used to it," a ragged female voice replied from the corner.

Retief took a few steps closer. "Well, well. Miss Ann Thrope, if I recall." He looked at the others. And Marty . . . Zippie . . . is all of SMERCH locked up in here?"

"Nah," Zippie said. He was puffing on a hand-rolled joyweed joint. "Just the five of us. What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you, actually," he replied. "I heard there were some SMERCH people up this way."

"Yeah?" Marty said suspiciously. He rubbed his wrist, as if it were still sore. "Like, why do you care, man?"

"Actually, I thought I'd come out here and rescue you."

Ann looked past his shoulder. "I don't see an army with you."

"Yeah," Marty said. "You came to rescue us, but who's gonna rescue you?"

"Oh, we'll figure that part out when we come to it." Casually, he tugged at the cuff of his commando suit, turning up the gain on the translator electronics wired into the collar. He heard a tiny, answering squeal of feedback, and nodded to himself. "Tell me, though," he continued. "I heard you folks were here with some GNN people. You haven't seen them, by chance, have you?"

"Sure. That Goodeleigh woman and a couple of technicians are here. We all flew out together yesterday on a GNN yacht."

As he walked slowly across the cell, it seemed to him that the feedback squeal was loudest directly under the light panel in the ceiling. "Where are they?"

"I don't know," Ann said. "I guess the Lord muckity-muck Kreplach has them down in his office suite, someplace."

"Down?"

"The Krll like to bury themselves down deep. This fortress has all of these, like, subbasements, y'know? And that's where the bigwigs hide out, down where the Terry Hellbores and genius bombs can't reach them."

"I see." He watched as Zippie passed the joyweed joint to a young woman in torn, shipboard coveralls. She accepted it and puffed on it eagerly. The smoky haze in the cell was already thick enough to chew on, and Retief was glad he still had his nasal filters in place. "Where'd you get the weed? Didn't they search you?"

"Aw, nah, it's, like, everywhere, y'know?" Ann said with a dismissive shrug. "This is where the stuff, like, comes from, didja know?"

"I did know, yes. What do the Krll use it for, anyway?"

"I don't think they do, man," Zippie told him. "Other than selling it to us and a few others. I think they're afraid of it, myself."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"Well, they always wear that armor, y'know? And they never come in here when we're tokin'. Like, they keep their distance, y'know?"

"Interesting. So you folks are just smoking up to keep the bad guys at bay?"

"Well, that and cruisin', man." Zippie accepted the joint and sucked down the smoke. "It, like, passes the time. This place'd be a real downer, otherwise."

"I'll bet it would be. Why are you here, anyway?"

"We came out with the GNN crew," the woman in the shipsuit said. "Like, to show them the Krll were really good guys, y'know?"

"Uh-huh. And they tossed you in here? Why?"

She shrugged listlessly. "I think we're, like, here to guarantee their good behavior, y'know?"

Zippie shook his head mournfully. "Y'know, I don't think the Krll are such nice guys after all." He offered Retief the joint. "Want a hit, man?"

"Thanks. Maybe later. Why don't you just fill me in on everything that's been going on."

2

"So SMERCH was started by the Groaci," Retief said, an hour later. "An organization for smuggling students into B'rukley for spontaneous peace demonstrations, and also to serve as a labor pool. But why? What do they get out of meddling in the Concordiat's little police action out here on Odiousita?"

"Well, they told us it was because they wanted to spread peace and chumship across all of the inhabited universe," Ann said, but with a trace of doubt in her voice.

"That's their official party line, yes," Retief told her. "But I suspect their interest runs a bit deeper than that, and in channels not quite so altruistic."

"Shtliff told us you CDT johnnies would say that," Marty observed.

"Mm. Did he tell you why he disguised himself as a Grothelwaith tourist when he was out among the masses?" Retief asked.

"Well . . . er . . . that is . . . he said something about virtue being, like, its own reward," the woman in torn coveralls said. Her name was Connie Strue, and with Ann Thrope was one of the founding members of SMERCH. "He said it was, like, the solemn public duty of the noble Groaci to do good deeds without expecting, like, you know, public approbation."

"Was he wearing hip waders when he told you all that?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind." Retief stood up and walked over to the center of the cell, standing directly beneath the light panel. "Of course, it's obvious," he said in a loud voice, "that the Groaci are duping the Krll. I wonder if the Lord General Kreplach knows that the noble Groac has been playing him for a fool, stringing him along just so they can steal the secrets of joyweed?"

One of the SMERCH representatives, a colorless individual they'd introduced as Fred, happened to be holding the joint at that moment. He looked at it doubtfully. "Secrets of joyweed? What secrets?"

"Oh, you have to be one of the innermost illuminati to know them. Like me." He thought a moment. "Do you have a fresh one of those?"

"Sure," Zippie said, reaching into a pocket and producing a somewhat crumpled cylinder of white paper. It looked like a standard dopestick with the self-igniting tip, but the crumbled vegetable matter was the characteristic deep black of joyweed. "Toke up, man!"

"Thanks." He slipped the cylinder into his breast pocket.

"Hey, you gonna bogie that all by yourself?" Marty wanted to know. "Or you gonna share?"

"I'll share it later." He changed the subject. "You said you came here in a GNN yacht. Where's the ship's crew?"

"That would be me," Connie said. "I'm a contract pilot signed with GNN."

"Just you?"

"The ship's an Archangel-class, the Story at Eleven. She's all automated. Just needs, like, one person to tell her where to go."

"And she's berthed at the local starport, I gather?"

"She was when they took us off her."

"Archangel-class boats have some pretty sophisticated antitamper devices. I doubt they've taken her anywhere else. Okay, that gives us something to work with, at least."

"Like, what, man?" Fred wanted to know.

"I'll tell you later," Retief said. "Maybe when your heads are a bit clearer. Right now, I have to go with the nice tin soldiers and answer some questions."

Ann looked doubtfully at the locked door. "What do you mean? They tossed you in here to rot, like the rest of us!"

"No, I suspect someone will be along any moment now to have a little chat with me." A hollow thump sounded at the door and, a moment later, it swung open. "See what I mean?"

An armored soldier with an officer's rank insignia stepped into the cell, batting at the smoke. His red eye fell on Retief. "You! Come with me!" Behind him, in the hallway outside, half a dozen armored troops gathered in a nervous huddle, weapons at the ready.

"Wow," Zippie said. "He's, like, psychic, man!"

"Keep cool," Retief told them. "I'll be back for you as soon as I can."

And he followed the nervous guards out.

3

The seven of them marched him to an elevator down the hallway. It was a tight fit in an already snug compartment. Retief stood wedged in between four of the seven, studying with interest the back of the helmet of the soldier directly in front of him. He could just make out a logo stamped into the shiny metal—Hitachi-Yakuza Microfirm—and the words to release, pull here. The rasp and hiss of their breathing gear filled the compartment, and the soldiers to either side kept the muzzles of their weapons pressed against Retief's head.

Or, rather . . . three of the soldiers were breathing noisily. The other four were not. The three possessed rank insignia on their helmets—a hyper-lieutenant, a rifle-sergeant, and a spear-corporal, if he was reading them right. Possibly, they were the same three of those ranks who'd brought him to the fortress. The nonbreathing ones bore no insignia and stood as rigidly as robots.

At last, though, the door slid open and they marched out in clashing unison, ten levels down in the fortress subbasement. They gave him scarcely more room to breathe than he'd had in the elevator as they marched him through another set of corridors and into a large and impressive chamber.

It was a bit on the gloomy side here. Indirect lighting cast wavering patterns of blue and green across the ceiling high overhead, creating an effect like that of a coral reef in shallow seas. The effect was heightened by the décor, which included long streamers of something like seaweed festooning the walls and a thin layer of white sand on the floor. The air was wet and smelled of salt. Soldiers, armed and armored, ringed the walls in silent witness, rigidly at attention.

At the far end of the room, upon a raised dais, the Lord General Kreplach towered high into the blue-green mists upon a throne of white steel. His armor looked much like that of his troops, save that it was bigger, much, much bigger. The Lord General, if he rose from his throne, would have stood at least eighteen feet tall. His black and bright-polished silver helm, crested and bewinged, was as large as a fifty-gallon drum, and bore a particularly splendid rank insignia, an ornate Rorschach blotch in gold. The black gauntlets gripping the armrests on either side of the throne were broad enough and massive enough to crush a human with a one-handed squeeze.

To the left of the dais, Desiree Goodeleigh knelt on the sand, a collar around her neck. A six-foot Krll guard with an officer's insignia stood behind her, holding her leash.

"You are the one they call Retief," the giant said, the voice booming like thunder from the throne. "Kneel before me, small one! Kneel before the Lord General Kreplach of the Greater Krll Prosperity Sphere and Empire and do homage!"

"I'd rather stand, thank you." Retief looked the armored giant up and down. "You know, you look a lot taller in person than you do on-screen."

"Indeed. The lordly gods of Krll care not for the limitations of ordinary measure."

"I see. Must be useful when you're looking for a parking place." He reached for his breast pocket. "Mind if I smoke?"

"Yes, I mind," the Lord General thundered. "A noxious habit that pollutes the lungs, deadens the neurons, slows the reflexes, and cripples the mind! When we Krll rule the Shamballa Cluster, that poisonous weed shall be eradicated and its traffic stamped out, I promise you!"

"Good luck," Retief told the towering metal figure. "It's been tried." His hand dropped from his pocket. Purposefully, he strode across the floor to Desiree.

Several of the officers in the room appeared startled and raised their weapons. The troops, Retief noted, stood silent and unmoving, awaiting an order.

"Don't worry, boys," he told them. "I'm harmless. Well, more or less."

"Retief!" Desiree said. "What are you—"

"I see you like to keep the news media on a short leash, Lord General," he said. "But I don't think you understand us terrible Terries very well."

Reaching down, he grasped the collar at Desiree's throat. It was made of some lightweight metal and was clasped with a Groaci-made lock. He exerted his strength, the muscles in his arms and hands momentarily bulging, and then the fragile lock snapped with a sharp ping. He pulled the broken collar off and handed it to the surprised officer guarding her. "We believe in the sanctity of a free press," he said.

Several soldiers had started toward Retief, but the Lord General raised a metal hand. "Leave it. The small one can do nothing to Us."

Retief offered a hand to Desiree, who took it and stood unsteadily. "Thanks. What do you plan for an encore?"

"I can't wait to find out," he told her. He looked up at the giant above him. "So, you're the Lord General of the Krll. I like the suit. Who's your tailor?"

"Tell me now, small Terry, why I should not have my loyal soldiers carve you into slow bits and use your endoskeleton for scrimshaw work?"

"Because I have information you want, Kreplach, and you won't get it if your troops are disassembling me."

"Lord General Kreplach, if you please."

"If you say so."

"It is my sovereign will that you live . . . for now. Tell me, small one, what you know of the verminous race of slaves known as the Groaci."

"That covers a fair amount of territory, Lord General. Let's see. They're quintocular bipeds, about four-six to five-six in height, with horny exoskeletons, cartilaginous endostructures, and no heart. Gray to gray-brown or black integument. Two arms, each with five slender, flexible, and sticky spatulate digits which can often be found inside your pocket. Throat sacs, by which they tell lies with rather soft voices. They like hot sand, infinitive sentences, intrigue, thievery, brigandage, and skullduggery in general, and most of them are quite partial to fried gribble grubs. They—"

"To be enough . . . !" 

A slight, battered-looking figure emerged from an alcove behind the giant's throne, led on a short leash by a Krll officer.

"Well, well," Retief said. "Broodmaster Shtliff. I was wondering when you might put in an appearance. Where's General Snish?"

"To have had enough of your vile slanders, Terry spy!"

"Do you mean to say you don't like fried gribble grubs? My mistake. I was misinformed."

"My slight addiction to that particular sulfur-fried delicacy is not at issue here," Shtliff whispered, speaking High Obfuscese now, "especially since my enrollment in that twelve-step program on B'rukley. Retief, I'm shocked, shocked to hear a fellow diplomat, former diplomat, that is, give voice to such defamatory calumny."

"Speak Standard, Groaci," the Krll thundered. "None of your treacherous Obfuscese and weasel-word whisperings!"

"Ah, of course, Lord General. To be sure. I was just, ah, giving greeting to a fellow diplomat and comrade at arms. . . ."

The massive helmet tilted to one side. "More lies. We lordly Krll watch GNN, as do all other sentient beings in the Galaxy. This Retief creature was given the boot from his diplomatic order not fifty glans ago."

"Ah, but once a diplomat, always a diplomat, as they say, my Lord General," Shtliff replied. "And, ah, speaking of diplomatic immunity . . ." Reaching up, he tugged experimentally at the leash and collar. "I'm sure this treatment of the inviolate representative of your Groaci allies was a mere oversight. Still—"

"There is no oversight, five-eyed one," the Krll leader rumbled. "There are rumors that you have plotted against the Krll Lords of Creation, that you have attempted to steal Krll agricultural secrets."

"Why . . . whatever do you mean, my Lord General?" Shtliff's stalked eyes waggled in an expression of Indignation—a 602, pitched by terror to at least a T, Retief thought.

"I think he may be talking about your little operation at Camp Concentration, on B'rukley," Retief suggested. "You know, the part about where you have Terry students enslaved by drugs to cultivate joyweed plants smuggled there from Odiousita V . . . or Blmcht, as the Krll call it."

"Retief!" Shtliff cried in his weak voice. "Ixnay on the uffstay about the oyweedjay!"

"Ah-ha!" Kreplach boomed. "Shtliff! Have you been trying to cut the mighty Krll out of the just rewards of their agricultural efforts?"

"Why, ah, no, Lord General! How could you think such a thing? We simply, ah, that is . . . we acquired a few small samples of the Odiousitan flora purely for research purposes."

"Nay! Spare me the pallid excuses! It's true, then! That makes you a spy and a sneak, and beyond the pale insofar as the niceties of diplomatic protocol are concerned."

"But my Lord General! Spying and sneaking have always been among the great diplomatic prerogatives! Those, and not paying fines for traffic violations in hostile alien climes. These are sacred principles!"

"I am supreme Lord of Protocol here!" Kreplach boomed. "And I say you have infringed upon Krll copyright, trespassed on Krll hospitality, betrayed Krll magnanimity, absconded with Krll property, insulted Krll intelligence, and stolen the hard-won bread-substitute out of the mouths of honest Krll laborers! Fie upon thee! We, the mighty Krll, will annihilate you as a species! We will scorch your worlds, burn your cities, enslave your females, and garnishee your wages!" A giant, armored fist came down on the arm of the throne with an earsplitting boiler-factory clash. "We will eat your grubs with the drawn and steaming fatty portion of mammalian nutritional lactations! We will whack your noses with rolled-up newspapers—"

"Actually, the Groaci don't have noses, as such," Retief pointed out.

"That's okay. The mighty Krll don't have newspapers. I was speaking metaphorically."

"Ah. Then I trust the comment about eating Groaci grubs was also metaphor. In truth, I doubt very much that they taste very good, even with hot butter. But I do understand how you feel."

"Retief! To watch what you say . . . !"

"Still," he continued, "wholesale planet-scorching may be a bit extreme, don't you think?"

"I don't know. A scorched-planet policy has always worked well for us before."

"Maybe so. But you might give some consideration to other ways of dealing with your anger."

"Pah! What do you, small and pathetic biped, know of righteous Krll anger?"

"I know you wouldn't be talking about wholesale genocide if you weren't a bit miffed about something," Retief answered breezily. "And challenging the Concordiat Peacekeeper forces suggests you're either mad-angry or mad-crazy. I don't think it's the latter."

"Nonsense!" The giant rose from his throne, the wing tips of his monstrous helmet just missing an impact with the vaulted ceiling far overhead. "The mighty Krll Prosperity Sphere and Empire merely seeks its rightful place in a galaxy of slave-races and underlings. All who dare stand in our way shall be utterly crushed . . . ruthlessly smashed . . . pyrotechnically burned . . . destructively destroyed . . . and . . . and severely chastised! We shall conquer! We shall overcome! We shall stride forth to assume our mantle of manifest destiny as divine and sovereign rulers of the Galaxy's teeming trillions! We shall—"

"Kreppie," Retief said. "Cool it. You're overdoing things."

"Oh. Sorry." The giant sat down again, then performed a metallic doubletake. "Hey, wait a minute . . ."

"Your delivery is great, but you need to watch those megalomaniacal assertions." He tilted his head, indicating Desiree. "Especially in front of the media."

"I control the media on this world!" Kreplach boomed. The Lord General paused, collecting himself. "Still, I trust you understand if I am a bit short tempered, just now. The unrelenting strain of command, you know, the pressures of being supreme and sovereign dictator of an incompletely conquered world, the stress of fighting a war . . . you understand."

"Of course," Retief said. "It's not easy struggling beneath the burden of an inferiority complex as big as yours."

"We are not inferior, worm!" The Lord General's voice thundered so loudly that Desiree covered her ears, and bits of plaster pattered to the floor from the ceiling. "You are inferior! You and all of your dirt-grubbing kind! We are the mighty Krll! Destiny is ours to command! We are lords of creation, powerful, unrelenting, majestic, and very, very hungry . . . ah, ahem. Yes. Anyway . . . Captain!"

The Krll officer who was still holding Desiree's leash and broken collar, stepped forward. "Yes, my Lord General!"

"That one . . ." Kreplach pointed at Desiree, "goes back to her cell with the other GNN personnel. We may have further need of her."

"Yes, Supreme Warlord."

"These two . . ." He pointed at Retief and Shtliff. "They have outlived their usefulness. Take them both outside at once and shoot them."

"Lord General Kreplach!" Shtliff protested. "I beg you, no! We are under diplomatic immunity! Well, I am under diplomatic immunity! Shoot Retief if you feel you must, but—"

"Your so-called diplomatic immunity means nothing here, pathetic small one. You are not accredited to the Groac mission here, nor have you been recognized by the Krll military government. You are a miscreant and a spy! Captain Hollishkes! Take them away!"

"At once, Your Awesomeness!" The Krll officer produced an ugly-looking handgun and waggled it with an authoritarian swagger. "Very well, pathetic bipeds. You have an appointment with Death! Move!"

 

4

"To think that so promising a career as mine should be so ignominiously truncated!" Shtliff mourned as the Krll officer and two rankless soldiers marched them down a gray passageway. "To meditate never again on Groac manifest destiny while fingering curiously carved kiki stones, to enjoy nevermore the warm embrace of pleasantly heated sand . . ."

"Not to mention the warm embrace of a certain Groaci clerk-typist with really great thoracic knobs," Retief observed.

All five of Shtliff's stalked eyes whipped about to stare up at Retief. "To wonder how you know such personal intimacies, snooping Terry!"

"To never breathe a word to anyone, Shtliff. Especially to your wife."

"Alas," Shtliff said in doom-laden Groaci, "to hardly matter now." He sighed. "To be somewhat peeved, Retief, that you should so traitorously sell out a fellow diplomat!"

"To not be a diplomat any longer, Shtliff. Remember?"

"Hey, stop all that whispering and mumbling," their guard told them. They rounded a corner and approached a waiting elevator.

The five of them squeezed in, the two privates to either side of Retief and Shtliff, the officer standing behind them. One of the soldiers pressed a button, the door slid shut, and the elevator began to rise.

Retief reached into his pocket and pulled out the joyweed joint, thumbing it alight.

"That is forbidden!" the officer rumbled. "Extinguish that!"

"The condemned prisoner's last smoke, Captain Hollishkes. It can't be forbidden. It's traditional."

"Well . . . um . . . in that case . . . but . . ."

Retief put the joint in his mouth and drew in a full-cheeked mouthful of smoke, careful not to inhale any into his lungs. At that, he felt a growing, surging light-headedness as the psychoactive elements of the smoke filtered through the capillaries under his tongue.

Turning, he leaned forward and blew the smoke squarely into the air vents of the Krll captain's helmet.

The officer made a sound like gears grinding and staggered back against the elevator wall. "Soldiers!" the being gasped, beating at the smoke. "Kill them!"

But as the two Krll privates turned, bringing up their weapons, Retief snapped, "Soldiers: return semicolon!"

Immediately, the two soldiers lowered their weapons and resumed their stoic, face-forward positions.

"Sollldierrrs!" the captain gasped, the word oddly drawn out. He appeared to be moving very slowly, trying to raise his pistol. "Kiiiillll . . . themmm. . . ."

Again, the two robot warriors turned in place and raised their weapons. "Soldiers: return semicolon," Retief commanded, and they pivoted back to their former positions. Reaching out, he plucked the handgun from the captain's weakened grasp.

Shtliff goggled at him with all five eyes. "Retief! How did you . . . ?"

"The same people manufacture these Krll-soldier automatons as make the made men used by GOSH. Both are apparently programmed using verbal C or C++ commands. The GOSH soldiers are a bit creaky and obsolete. Their C-programmed verbal output gives the game away . . . see? These guys have more modern software, I imagine. Or maybe it's just that Krll soldiers aren't programmed to talk!"

As he spoke, he reached around to the back of Captain Hollishkes's helmet, his fingers finding the latch there at the base of the neck. "Ah. here we are. Let's see what the Krll are really like."

He gave the latch a tug. Instead of coming off, the helmet hinged forward with a loud hiss of escaping pressure, revealing . . . nothing. The Krll inside the armor had no head. Instead, the helmet was packed with electronics, cheap Japanese circuitboards, and wires. The helmet pulled down further, however, and the torso of the armored suit split wide open, revealing what for all the world appeared to be a small control cockpit inside a mostly hollow thorax.

In the center of that space, surrounded by palm-sized screens and data boards, astride an oddly shaped chair or rack, rested what appeared to be a three-foot-long lobster. It stared up at Retief's face with tiny, wildly waving stalked eyes like shiny black olives. Its multiple limbs, both large fighting pinchers and a dozen or so smaller grasping and manipulatory claws, waggled about as the creature struggled in obvious distress. "Don't eat me!" it piped in a thin, shrill little-girl's voice.

And then, startlingly, it went limp.

"Oh . . . Retief!" Shtliff said, his breathy voice odd. He laid a long-fingered hand on Retief's shoulder, lightly caressing. "That was . . . masterfully done."

"Hit the emergency stop, will you, Shtliff?" Retief said. "It should be that bright pink knob off by itself."

The elevator bumped to a stop between floors, giving Retief time to more closely examine the Krll armored-suit controls. The Krll was wearing something like a second carapace over its back, a light and flexible metal, like aluminum foil. Removing it, Retief noted that the side next to the Krll's exoskeleton was studded with small neurosensors.

"What is it, Retief?" Shtliff said, leaning very close.

"At a guess, it's a neuronet transceiver," Retief told the Groaci. "Picks up signals from the central nervous system and transmits them to the suit's computer for analysis and implementation. And it probably takes in data on things like body position and balance and feeds them back to the wearer. Pretty neat. . . ."

"It's . . . wonderful. . . ." Again, Shtliff caressed Retief's shoulder.

"Are you feeling okay, Shtliff?"

"Oh, yes, darling." He sighed. "I've never felt better. . . ."

"Interesting," Retief said. "Joyweed gets humans high. It slows Krll nervous systems to the pace of cold molasses. And it seems to make you Groaci singularly amorous." He was remembering the odd behavior of the two Groaci guards back on B'rukley.

"To care not for such trivia when the moons are full and the air sweet with the heady and magical scent of p'chubchub blossoms! To care only for my beloved, for his firm and commanding tone of voice, for the thought of sharing with him an intimate tête-à-tête in a tub of hot sand. . . ."

"Easy, Shtliff. Get hold of yourself. You're not my type."

"To matter not, these nattering details of biology! To be living, breathing, loving beings, yearning to break the strictures of societal prejudice and narrow-mindedness!"

"It would never work, Shtliff," Retief replied in Standard. "You'd not respect me in the morning. Hit the emergency stop again. We need to get you some fresh air."

The elevator lurched into motion again, and a moment later the door opened. The passageway outside, fortunately, was empty.

"Give me a hand, Shtliff." He dragged the open suit of armor out into the corridor.

"To do whatever my beloved commands," Shtliff said. "To wonder what to do with these two large and handsome bookends."

"The soldiers? Leave them. They'll just stand there until they get a new set of instructions. C'mon. I want to find a place where we can have some privacy."

"Ah! These are the words I've yearned to hear these long moments past. Yes, Retief! Yes! Yes! Take me, my love-monkey humanoid! Take me, I'm yours!"

"This is so sudden, Shtliff. Let's wait until your head clears a bit."

"If you are not too long, beloved Retief, I will wait here for you all my life!"

"I don't care if you do quote Oscar Wilde," Retief said, "I still don't think it would work out."

Together, they dragged the Krll armor across the corridor. A door there opened into what appeared to be a janitor's closet. Shtliff closed the door as Retief began studying the armor.

The Krll appeared to be crustaceans very much indeed like terrestrial lobsters, albeit larger, and adapted to breathe either underwater or on land. A system of spray nozzles kept the creature's exposed gills comfortably moist inside its cozy cockpit. Various slender, plastic tubes appeared to provide food, drinking water, and waste management. The Krll would have to be careful, Retief noticed, not to get their tubes mixed up.

Carefully, he removed the creature from its cockpit and placed it in a bucket half filled with water.

"Is he dead?" Shtliff asked.

"No. See that pulse, right under the buccal palps? I think the poor thing just fainted."

"We are much larger than he. Perhaps we frightened him?"

"We scared the pants off of him . . . if he wore pants. But I don't think it was our size that did it."

"What, then?"

"I'm not sure. Let's have a look at the armor. It looks like a Groaci copy of a Japanese design. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you, Shtliff?"

The being sighed. "My love for you has weakened my resolve. Indeed, my darling Retief, I would do anything for you, tell you anything! Yes, it is true. Noble Groac has been footing the Krll military initiative for years."

"They don't come from the Galactic Core, do they?"

"No. That was mere subterfuge, a clever diversion suggested by military necessity. But . . . darling! How could you possibly have known?"

"For a life-form that claimed to love high-energy, high-ultraviolet, high-radiation environments, these fellows seemed to take some pretty serious precautions not to be exposed to the local daylight. You'll also notice that their command center was buried deep down in a subbasement."

"Yes, for protection against Concordiat weapons."

"So I was told. But we have beings here who"—he ticked points off on his fingers—"never show themselves unarmored, bury themselves deep under an artificial mountain, and dress up the throne room in sea-bottom chic, right down to the coral sand, seaweed and mood lighting. I think they evolved in the oceans of some world orbiting a cooler sun than they claim, and only came to Odiousita V because this was where joyweed could be found."

"Ingenious, sweetheart," Shtliff said, his eyestalks weaving in frank admiration. "Such brilliance should be rewarded. . . ." He reached out tentatively.

Retief gently brushed the proffered limb aside. "No, Shtliff. To tell you the truth, I think we should just be friends."

"Retief, my love! How can you be so cold, so heartless!"

"Actually, I do have a heart. Groaci don't. You use overall bodily muscular contractions to move your circulatory fluids around, don't you?"

"Retief, beloved, how can you talk so clinically when love is in the air!"

"Shtliff, all that's in the air right now is joyweed smoke. You'll feel a lot better when you get that drug out of your system. If you have to, go do some deep-knee bends to speed up the blood flow, okay? I need to work on this control unit."

The foil neural transceiver was roughly the size and shape of a skullcap or yarmulke, designed to fit with some overlap over the curved back carapace of a Krll inside one of the suits of armor. By chance, the device could be a skullcap . . . fitting snugly over a human scalp.

"Shtliff?"

"Yes, honey."

"I'm going to try something. I want you to stand by. If I appear to be in distress, if it looks as though I'm getting into trouble, pull this thing off of me pronto. Can you do that?"

"Yes, my darling. Anything. But why—"

"I need to know if I can operate Krll machinery," he said, and slipped the foil cap onto his head.

His brain exploded. . . .

 

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