Blonde Bombshell (25 page)

40

Portland, Oregon

“People keep staring at us,” the girl hissed through her teeth. “I don’t like it.”

“Ignore them,” her brother said firmly.

“It’s because I’m a female, isn’t it? I’m doing something wrong, like something a female wouldn’t do, and they’re noticing.”

People were staring. Some of them laughed. One or two tried to engage them in conversation, but they walked away quickly. “Don’t ask me,” her brother replied. “Just don’t encourage them, that’s all.”

“Encourage
them—”

Her brother shrugged. “We’re nearly there. Just put up with it, OK?”

They walked past a group of young men sitting on a low wall.

For some reason, they all started whistling the same tune. The girl had had enough. She scowled at them and shrieked, “Stop it!”

The young men laughed. One of them got up and blocked her path. “What’re you gonna do about it, princess?” he asked. “Like, you gonna cut me down with your lightsaber?” This was apparently a joke, and a good one too, because the other young men laughed a lot.

“Ignore them,” her brother hissed through his teeth. That turned out to be a joke too.

“Why don’t you use your special mind powers?” one of them suggested — the funniest joke yet, judging by their reaction. It prompted the rest of them to get off the wall and close in.

“I think they want us to fight them,” the girl said.

Her brother shrugged. He was, after all, Ostar, and they were just humans. “Fine,” he said, and pulled the metal torch thing off his belt. He wasn’t familiar with its use — there hadn’t been anything in the database, according to which humans used a primitive form of projectile weapon — but if the effect it had had on the ship’s computer was anything to go by, it was a tolerably efficient close-combat side-arm, not all that different from an Ostar
b’rrnft.
He thumbed the contact, and a beam of brilliant red light snapped out from the handle.

“Ready,” he said, but the young men had all run away. He turned off the beam, shrugged and put the torch back on his belt. “Probably some form of human mating display,” he said. “Come on, let’s get off the street.”

There was definitely something wrong. The waiter who showed them to their table at Simon’s Seafood Circus couldn’t help sniggering, though he tried his best not to. The other diners were nudging each other and whispering.

“Octopus,” the male said.

The waiter looked at him. “Excuse me?”

“We want an octopus,” the male repeated. “This is a seafood restaurant, right?”

“Sure,” the waiter said. “We do octopus. Um, would you like to order drinks now, or—?”

“Just the octopus,” the female said. “As it comes.”

“Sorry, I don’t—”

“Not cooked,” the male explained. “Just dead on a plate will do fine.”

The waiter went away, occasionally turning his head to look back at them and bumping into things. The female made a soft growling noise. “How did we end up here, anyway?” she said. “This is a really weird place.”

Her brother shrugged. “Random selection,” he replied. “I was in too much of a hurry to get out of there to fuss about choosing a destination. I thought the whole ship was about to blow.” He looked at his sister and grinned. “We did it,” he said. “I never thought we’d do it, but we did.”

His sister shook her head. “Did you get a look at that auto-repair system?” she said. “I didn’t know they had them on the
R’wfft-class,
not as sophisticated as that, anyhow. We should’ve torn out the central processor. No way it could’ve repaired
that.”

“Yes, well.” Her brother scowled. “We had to leave before we finished the job, didn’t we? On account of the whole thing looking like it was about to go up.”

“On account of you firing that laser beam—”

“Which you gave me. I asked for a damn flashlight.”

They glowered at each other for a moment, then agreed an unspoken truce. “Did you manage to liberate enough bits to fix the communications beacon?”

Her brother nodded. “I think so. We’ll find out as soon as the octopus comes.”

Her sister lowered her voice. “Dad’s not going to be happy.”

“He’ll understand.”

It was such a monstrously unlikely prediction that his sister didn’t bother contradicting it. “With any luck,” she said, “he’ll be so pissed off with us he’ll order us home. I can’t wait to get off this lousy miserable planet. I can’t wait to get out of this
body.”

Her brother looked at her. The time, he realised, had come. She had to be told.

“Actually,” he said.

He explained; about how the instabilities had been augmented beyond acceptable tolerances by their use of the teleport system, horribly exacerbated by their being sucked into the matter-transmutation grid and changed into the bodies they were currently wearing. Any attempt to reverse the procedure, he pointed out, would almost certainly be fatal. Like it or not, they were both human now. For the duration.

She took it well, he thought. She didn’t scream or jump up yelling. She didn’t attack him. She didn’t even smash anything, not so much as a breadstick. She just sat there, like a dead thing.

“It’s not so bad,” he heard himself say, though why he should say something so crass he couldn’t begin to imagine. “We could still go home—”

“As humans.” The first words she’d spoken.

“Well, yes, as humans. But that’d be OK.”

“We’d be
pets.”

“People will make allowances,” her brother said soothingly. “So long as we stay indoors and don’t talk to anyone we don’t know—”

“Pets,”
his sister growled at him. “We’ll have to wear collars with our names on them. And those cute little jackets, when it’s cold. And have our food on the floor, in bowls with our names on them.”

“It could be worse,” her brother said. “We could’ve been killed up there.”

“Dad’ll have to take us for walks in the park, throw sticks for us. Think about it, will you? The rest of our lives, trapped in the house, not allowed on the furniture.” She shook her head, and the coils of hair that covered her ears bounced up and down. “No way. I’d rather stay here.”

They looked at each other.

“Would you?” her brother said.

There was a long silence, during which the waiter appeared, with a dead octopus on a plate. He put it down on the table between them and fled.

“I don’t know,” the female said after a while.

“We’d be stuck in these bodies,” her brother pointed out. “And you’re right, there’s definitely something weird about them. Did you notice the way that human was staring at us?”

“I don’t care,” his sister replied. “I’m not going home like this. You can if you want. I’m not going to spend the rest of my natural life sleeping in a basket.”

“You wouldn’t have to,” her brother said. “They’ll make arrangements, we’ll be—”

“And
I’m female.”
She said it a bit too loudly. For a couple of seconds, she had the undivided attention of her fellow-diners. “You know what that means. If we went home. Walks in the park. Male humans. No, no way. I’m not putting myself through that. I’m staying.” She looked around desperately, as if hoping a door would open and she could go back through it into the past. “They must have deserts here, or jungles, places where people don’t live. We could go there. It wouldn’t be much of a life, but it’d be better than—”

“Let’s go,” her brother said. “They’re all looking at us.”

He snatched the octopus off the plate, put it down the front of his robe and pulled the belt tight. “Have you got any money?”

“What? No.”

“Nor me. All right, count of three, we’ll make a run for the door.”

They ran for it. Nobody tried to stop them. The waiter even opened the door for them.

When they were sure they weren’t being pursued, they slowed to a walk. The streets were quieter now, but there were still people about. Whatever it was about them that was attracting attention, it hadn’t worn off yet.

“We need to get back to Novosibirsk,” the male said, as a middle-aged woman pointed at him and shrieked with laughter. “All our gear’s there, everything we need for calling home.”

“So?” his sister replied. “They do have transport facilities on this stinking planet.”

“Yes, but you have to pay money.”

“Fine. We’ll get some out of a bank.”

Her brother pursed his lips. “Like I said, all our gear’s in Novosibirsk. Including the interface module I used to hack into the bank computer.”

His sister stopped dead. “No money?”

He shook his head. “Not till we get our stuff back. No money, no communications. No change of clothes,” he added significantly. “All we’ve got to work with is what we’re standing up in.”

His sister closed her eyes. He got the impression she was counting to twenty under her breath. If that was the case, she didn’t make it beyond twelve. “You moron,” she snapped. “What the hell were you thinking of, dumping us here? The other place was bad enough, but this—”

“I said,” her brother interrupted defensively, “I was in a hurry, I didn’t have time to set co-ordinates. I just twiddled the dial and hit the Go button. A second later and we’d have been toast.”

His sister looked down at herself, her eyes dwelling for a moment on the contours. “Toast would’ve been better,” she said with feeling. “Toast doesn’t have, you know, all these
bits.
Look, are you sure we can’t change out of these bodies? I don’t think I can handle it much longer.”

He explained again, this time including extracts of the relevant maths. When he’d finished, she nodded slowly. “Promise me one thing,” she said.

“What?”

“Next time you plan on saving us both from certain death, leave me out.” She clawed at the right-hand coil of hair, until it came loose and flopped down on to her shoulder. “There’s worse things, OK?”

“You don’t mean that,” her brother said firmly. “It’ll all be all right, you’ll see. Just as soon as we can get back to Novosibirsk.”

“How, exactly? Walk?”

Her brother shrugged, causing a tentacle to poke out from the folds of his robe. “I look at it this way,” he said. “We just succeeded in burglarising a
R’wfft
-class missile vehicle in planetary orbit using nothing but a few salvaged components and a dead fish. Once aboard, we neutralised the security lock-outs and put the bomb out of action, albeit only temporarily.” He grinned, and slapped his sister on the back; she snarled, but he ignored her. “Face it, kid,” he said, “we’re hot stuff. If we can do all that, somehow I don’t see travelling a few thousand kilometres as an insuperable problem. After all,” he added, “if humans can do it, can’t be all that hard.”

“And once we get there?”

“We call home,” her brother said, “and ask Dad. He’ll tell us what to do.”

41

?????

The director of the Institute for Interstellar Exploration sighed and felt in his pocket.

“There you go, Spot,” he said, and threw his human a treat. Spot jumped, caught it in his mouth and swallowed. “That’s all,” the director said. “Good boy. Sit.”

Spot, of course, had no way of knowing how lucky he was. No other human on Ostar got treats like that; it was a genuine Earth delicacy, long, thin slices of the
potato
root, deep-fried in animal fat and smothered in salt. He’d had
potato
plants brought back specially by the second Pathfinder probe, and cultivated them secretly in a purpose-built ecodome where Earth’s climatic conditions were exactly duplicated. You spoil that human, his wife said, but she had no idea of the extent of his indulgence.

Spot was gazing at him hopefully, just in case there might be another slice of fried root. No pressure, but … The director realised he was grinning; he couldn’t help it. “Oh, go on, then,” he said, “but it’s the last one.” Spot snapped the root slice out of the air, gobbled it up and sat on his haunches, jaws open. It was almost as if he was grinning too.

The sound of a buzzer made the director look up. It was time. They were here.

“Stay,” he told the human, and got up to answer the door.

There were four of them, one more than he’d expected. The fourth Ostar was a stranger.

“Who’s this?” the director asked suspiciously.

“T’rrrft, PDF,” said the elderly female. “We think he ought to hear this.”

Planetary Defence Force. The director growled softly. “I don’t think so,” he said. “How do I know he’ll keep his mouth shut?”

“You have my word on that,” the female replied. “Well, are you going to let us in?”

The director stepped back and they walked past him into the main living area. Spot jumped down guiltily from the window seat and curled up in his basket.

“You keep a human,” the PDF officer said.

“What about it?”

“Nothing. It’s just, I’d have thought, knowing your views on—”

“That’s got nothing to do with it,” the director said. “Sit down, all of you.”

The visitors sat stiffly on the long bench-seat. There was a large bowl of bones on the occasional table next to it. The director didn’t offer them round. “You said there was something you needed to tell us,” said a small male, in a high, rather nervous voice.

The director nodded. “It can’t have escaped any of you that something’s gone wrong with the Earth project.”

“The planet’s still there,” said a large young male. “I looked through the big telescope at the university last night. Even allowing for relativistic distortion, we should be seeing digamma radiation from the blast corona by now. May I take it that the mission has failed again?”

The director nodded. “We lost contact with the missile vehicle approximately twelve hours ago,” he said. “Prior to that, there was no indication of a systems malfunction. The bomb had sent down a type-6 probe, mostly to find out what sort of defences the planet has, and to account for the loss of the first missile. We received some data, inconclusive and mostly garbled, but there was some reason to believe that Ostar technology is part of the defence system.”

There was a long pause. Then the female said, “Salvaged from the first missile, presumably.”

“No.” The director shook his head. “I have — other sources of information. I have reason to believe that our efforts are being sabotaged; not by the humans, but by someone right here on Homeworld.”

“The Ethical Treatment brigade,” the large young male said, perhaps a little too eagerly.

“They would appear to be the most likely candidates, yes,” the director replied. “Now, that’s a separate matter. Political,” he added, with distaste. “I don’t concern myself with that sort of thing,” he went on, “I’m just a scientist. But if someone, some misguided person, is trying to interfere with this project, obviously we need to do something about it. Or rather,” he added, with a sour look at the PDF officer, “you do. I can’t overstate the importance of this operation. It has to go forward.”

The PDF man cleared his throat. “I wanted to ask you about that,” he said.

There was a long, awkward silence. Then the director said, “I thought you might. I take it the others haven’t—”

The female shook her head. “We thought you’d be the best person to explain, Y’f. After all—”

“Quite.” The director could feel his ears go back. Some Ostar, he knew, had learned to control their instinctive reactions — ears, rising hackles, wagging tails — but he’d never been able to do it himself, and he couldn’t help despising those who could. An Ostar shouldn’t have to conceal his emotions. An Ostar shouldn’t want to. “And I guess it’s time we brought the military in on this. After all, they have a right to know, they’ll be the ones flying the warships.”

The PDF man looked up sharply. “That’s an interesting remark,” he said. “What warships would these be?”

“The missiles would appear to have failed,” the director said quietly. “Therefore, we must send a fleet. I’m not a military man, but I believe a dozen heavy cruisers with destroyer and fighter escorts ought to be able to get the job done.”

“To destroy a single planet.” The PDF man nodded. “I should think so, yes. It would depend on what sort of resistance we’re likely to encounter. But that brings me to the point I wanted to ask you about.”

The silence took on a sharp edge. The other three guests assumed invisibility-cloak expressions; they weren’t there, and they had no idea who this strange person was. But the PDF man gave no sign that he’d noticed.

“Destroying the planet,” he said. “It’s a rather drastic step, isn’t it?”

The director didn’t answer straight away. “You’ve seen for yourself the havoc their music is causing—”

“Ah yes.” The PDF man nodded briskly. Either he could control his ears or he wasn’t afraid of anything. “Actually, that’s quite near the top of my list of things to ask about. You see, our pack at Military Intelligence have been doing a bit of investigating on our own account, and guess what? All those dreadful, infuriating, mind-destroying Earth music transmissions—”

The director growled, quite loudly. Maybe the PDF man was deaf.

“They come from Earth all right,” the PDF man went on, “but when they reach Ostar they’re pretty harmless, really. You can just about pick them up on a really sophisticated polaron spectrometer array, but you certainly can’t hear them with the naked ear, so to speak. No, what’s causing all the trouble is the fucking great big signal-booster station tucked away down there at the tip of the W’rrgft peninsula. It’s picking up the Earth signal and belting it out at several million times amplification.”

Dead silence. The director’s face didn’t move, but his ears were flat to the sides of his skull.

“At first we assumed it was an accident,” the PDF man went on. “But then we looked into it a bit closer, and someone ferreted out the design specs of the booster. You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn that array was purpose-built, to do precisely that job. By your department, as you perfectly well know. Couldn’t have been, of course, because it was commissioned five years before the first signal reached us. Or at least,” he went on, “before we became aware of the first signal; aware as in people falling down in the street screaming, ‘make it stop!”‘ The PDF man shot a pleasant smile at the director. “Now then,” he said. “You may be wondering why, if we have reason to believe that our entire civilisation is being crippled by a nuisance that doesn’t originate on a faraway world of which we know little, but instead is being ramped up to agony level by a facility built and run by your organisation —” the director’s hackles had risen so much, they were pressing his collar tight enough to his neck to impede his breathing. But he said nothing — “why, if that’s the case,” the PDF man went on, “we’ve done nothing about it. I mean, by rights we should’ve turned the thing off immediately and arrested everybody in this room. Well, shouldn’t we?”

The director nodded slowly. “Strictly speaking,” he said.

“Quite. But we haven’t. We thought, The director of the Institute is a highly respected scientist with so many letters after his name you could play S’krabel with them. If he’s done something like this, maybe just possibly he’s got his reasons. And maybe we should ask him what they are before hauling him off to trial for crimes against Ostarkind.”

The director nodded once, a very slight movement. “You finished?”

“Not quite,” the PDF man went on. “There’s another thing. You knew the signals were fake and Earth isn’t a problem, but you went ahead and, using those signals as a pretext, persuaded the Alpha Council to send a bomb and blow the planet up. Now, a clear and flagrant breach of the D’ppggyt Accords is humanfeed compared with driving the entire Ostar race crazy with amplified Earth music, but I can’t help wondering why you’re so keen to do it. Just to satisfy my curiosity, director, what the hell did they ever do to you?”

The significance of the faint click in the background wasn’t lost on the PDF man. Better than anyone he knew the sound of a KXK 7000-series phaleron blaster safety catch being flipped off, and it was a reasonable assumption that the blaster in question was now being pointed at his head by one of the guests sitting next to him. He decided to pretend he hadn’t heard it.

“What did they do to me?” the director repeated, and his face split into a wide, tongue-lolling grin. “You really want to know.”

“Well, yes. Oh, and could whoever’s pointing that gun at me be very careful not to rest a claw on the fire preheat button? The 7000 series is still in development, and there’s a few glitches we haven’t ironed out yet, like overheating the capacitor and blowing the coil. If that happens, you’ll really annoy the Institute of Cartographers. They’ll have to redraw all the maps of the city.”

The director nodded at someone the PDF man couldn’t see. “It’s a long story,” he said.

“Oh good. I like stories.”

“Very well,” the director said. “One hundred million years ago …”