Gibraltar Sun (8 page)

“I want to have Sar-Say transferred to the Institute.”

Sebastian Knowlan chuckled. “I’ll say it will be a controversial request. Anton Bartok will squeal like a stuck pig when you present it to him.”

“I plan to make the request of the World Coordinator.”

“Make that two stuck pigs!”

“Do you think the Coordinator will go along with something like that?” Hirakawa asked.

Fernandez shrugged. “Hard to say. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

“What about the safety issue? They have had him in quarantine since
Magellan
brought him back from New Eden.”

“A convenient excuse. Sar-Say has been exposed to humans for more than three years. So far, he hasn’t caught anything from us, and we haven’t caught anything from him. Besides, the biochemists have ruled out the possibility of cross-species contamination in this case.”

“Then how is he able to eat our food and survive?”

Fernandez shrugged. “Not my field. Don’t we give him supplements?”

“The point, Al, is that his biochemistry is damned close to human, or else he would have starved to death in our care. We need to make sure that it is safe before we let him have contact with Earth’s biosphere.”

“He’s already in contact with the biosphere, Hiro. Every project member who returns to Earth has the potential to carry Sar-Say’s diseases. None have. I grant you there may be a risk of contamination from Broa in general; but this particular Broa doesn’t seem to be carrying anything harmful.”

“Where are we going to house him?” Knowlan asked.

“Here in this building. We’ll turn the third floor into an apartment, with all necessary security measures. Bars on the windows, security beams, multiple manlocks to get in and out. It will be expensive, but not nearly as expensive as sending researchers to orbit.”

“I don’t know if the World Coordinator will see saving our budget as reason enough.”

“There are other benefits.”

“Such as?”

“First, he will be available to all of our specialists for close observation, not merely the handful approved for orbit. Instead of interpreting reports written by others, we will be able to do some original research for a change. Second, we will be able to expose Sar-Say to a wider range of controlled stimuli. For instance, how does he act in an unstructured social situation?”

“You mean we throw him a party?”

“Why not?” Fernandez replied, “Strictly in the interest of science, of course. We can make it a faculty social, invite the Mayor, the Governor, the President of the University.”

“That the real reason you want him?” Knowlan asked.

“Those are the
official
reasons,” Fernandez responded. “There are some unofficial ones as well. Having Sar-Say here will demonstrate the independence of the institute. Are we agreed?”

The two other academics nodded. It was likely that the Survey would decline their request, after which the custody battle would begin. This was as much about turf as it was about science.

#

“They want
what?
” Anton Bartok screamed, his voice rising to a girlish pitch toward the end of the sentence.

Amalthea Palan looked down at the message printout in her hand. “They want us to transfer Sar-Say to Harvard for intensive study,”

“Let a Broa loose on Earth? Are they crazy?”

“It would appear that they are,” she agreed. “Either that, or this is a bureaucratic muscle building exercise.”

“Tell them ‘no!’ If they don’t like that, I’ll take it up with the Coordinator.”

“The request was forwarded through the Coordinator’s office.”

“They can’t be serious,” he insisted. “Why take the risk of him being injured, or escaping, or worse yet, talking to the press?”

“Professor Fernandez has assured the coordinator that they will provide adequate security.”

“Fernandez could build a dozen fences around Harvard, and it still won’t be one-tenth as secure as keeping Sar-Say in orbit. Tell him that it is out of the question.”

“Yes, sir.”

She got up to leave. Bartok considered for a moment, then said, “Be more diplomatic than I just was, Mal.”

She smiled at her boss. “I always try, Mr. Director.”

With that, she left him alone with his problems.

#

Sar-Say gazed out the viewport at the big blue-and-white world and smiled – or rather, wiggled his big, flexible ears, which for his species, was the same thing.

He had been plotting how to escape his orbital prison, and here he was en route to their planet’s surface. He must think about the implications of this gift.

The winged craft was deserted save for the two biologists assigned to accompany him on his journey. He sat in a viewport seat, his body strapped in by the too large human restraints, and pressed his snout against the armor glass as they fell belly first toward the atmosphere. Dr. Samuels was asleep in the opposite viewport seat. His mouth hung open and his arms floated in front of him in the bent position that is the resting position for humans in microgravity. Behind him, Dr. Chandra was working on his datacom.

Outside the viewport, a wisp of glowing gas whipped off the leading edge of the wing as a soft tug pulled Sar-Say forward into the straps. They had reached the tangible limits of atmosphere. It would not be long now.

The light show increased over the next few minutes until the landing craft was bathed in luminescent plasma and a high pitched keening sound echoed through the cabin. The sound was at a frequency too high for human beings to hear, but was well within the range of Sar-Say’s ears. Gravity had returned to the boat, causing the passengers to sink into their seats. Dr. Samuels’ arms flopped into his lap and he awakened with a snort, looked around, and then leaned his head against the fuselage and drifted off again.

Sar-Say had heard that Dr. Samuels was dating Karen Hansen, one of the psychologists who were always asking him inane questions. If so, he suspected that the biologist had spent the previous sleep cycle fornicating, and therefore, needed his rest. The interplay between male and female humans was one of the things Sar-Say studied most closely. Not only were their entertainment programs filled with the subject, practically to the exclusion of all else, but their sex drive seemed to have considerable bearing on their personalities and outlooks.

Not being of their species, of course; the fascination that humans held for members of the opposite sex was largely lost on him. Conditions had to be perfect to send a Broan female into estrus and only after she exuded a particular pheromone were Sar-Say and his fellows interested in procreation.

Half an hour later – Sar-Say had been among humans long enough to think in their units of time – the landing craft was largely through the incandescent phase of their reentry. Somewhere aft, engines came to life and the ship leveled off from its steep descent just as the shoreline of a large continent came into view.

They flew across an endless green, brown, and tan land for more than an hour before the ship banked hard to the right, then straightened out and dropped its landing gear. A few minutes later, their wheels touched down on tarmac and the ship decelerated rapidly to a halt in the middle of a long runway.

After a minute’s wait, the engines came alive again and they began to taxi toward a large steel and glass structure that had the markings of a transportation disembarkation facility.

After five cycles of the home world about its star, Sar-Say had finally made it to Earth!

#

Gustavus Adolfus Heinz had gotten up early on a cold, overcast day to drive to Logan Regional Hub. He had received word that his shipment from Serendipity had arrived and was in bonded storage.

The shipment consisted of a load of Borodin Spice, prized for its aphrodisiac qualities, and was worth more than three million credits for a few hundred kilograms of the alien weed. In that, it was not unusual. All the imports from the interstellar colonies were precious cargo. If they were not, the cost of shipping them back to Earth would have been prohibitive. To be profitable in interstellar trade, a product had to be light and precious. Diamonds from Salaman were in demand. Gold from Marquardt was not. A few pharmaceutical stocks were sufficiently valuable to ship to Earth.

The sun had barely risen, as evidenced by the clouds turning from black to dark gray, when Gus Heinz parked his groundcar at the freight company’s impound dock and hiked up the ramp to the office.

“Morning, Gus,” the night manager called out after he was buzzed in.

“Good morning, Charlie. I understand my shipment from Serendipity arrived yesterday afternoon.”

“Let’s check.” The manager called up a report on his workscreen, typed in a few symbols, then nodded. “Yep, it’s here all right. Duties have been paid. You can pick it up whenever you like.”

“Excellent. I have an armored transport arriving in a few minutes. Would you get it out to the loading dock?”

“Sure thing. We’ll have it ready in ten minutes.”

Unable to stand the interior heat in his heavy coat, Heinz wandered back out onto the loading dock to await the arrival of both his cargo and the transport. While standing out in the wind, he noticed a commotion at the VIP terminal next door.

Several police cruisers were lined up, along with a large truck with some sort of habitat strapped to its long bed. The thing looked like photographs he’d seen of old house trailers in the history books.

A crowd of men and women milled around, obviously waiting for something. From the equipment they carried, a number of them were reporters and cameramen. He could see at least three areas that had been set up for correspondents to make online reports.

“What is going on over there?” Heinz asked the freight supervisor when the latter showed up with his crate.

“They are waiting for the alien,” Charlie replied without looking up from the bill-of-lading he was studying.

“What alien?”

“The one the Stellar Survey captured a couple of years ago. They are bringing him down so that he can be transferred to Harvard.”

“Harvard? They putting him through college?”

“Some kind of a study center, I believe. It’s part of this trouble with aliens you see on the news.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t been following it very closely,” Heinz replied. “Business has kept me pretty busy of late.”

“You should,” Charlie replied. “They say they’ve discovered more than a million inhabited worlds out there.”

“I’d heard that,” Heinz agreed.

“I would think that would interest someone such as yourself,” the freight supervisor opined. “That’s one hell of a lot of potential customers for someone in the interstellar import-export business.”

Gus Heinz took the bill-of-lading, signed it, and continued waiting for his armored truck. While he did so, he contemplated the welcoming committee in front of the VIP terminal.

A million planets peopled by prospective customers was, indeed, something to think about!

#

Chapter Nine

Ssor-Fel perched on the lounging frame behind his work pedestal and contemplated a report concerning the planet Varkanto. It seemed the local master had diverted a river to provide scenic waterfalls for his nearby estate, and as a result, more than 12
5
square
fel
of prime cropland had been allowed to turn fallow. The resulting crop shortage had meant that the shipment of several delicacies much prized in the Zer System, one jump beyond Varkanto, had missed their quota for three periods in a row. The sub-sector master recommended that the miscreant, one Val-Vos by name, be discharged from his position for reasons of incompetence.

As Sector Master, Ssor-Fel was responsible for everything that happened in the region of Civilization under his control. He had to agree with the recommendation. Anyone so egotistical as to ruin an entire river valley so that he could improve his view was not fit to administer a district, let alone an entire planet. For any other malefactor, he would have approved the request without even thinking about it.

But Val-Vos was a name that he recognized. He was the younger cub of Val-Sat, the patriarch of the Val-Za clan. To point out that his loins had produced an idiot would not sit well with Val-Sat, and would likely have a negative impact on his, Ssor-Fel’s, future career.

The problem was how to ease the stupid cub out of his position without his sire taking revenge. Perhaps he could promote him to the sector level, make him an assistant with an impressive title, then set him to counting the fish harvest. Eventually, he would grow bored, resign, and go home. The problem was that it would take time, and in the interim, he would be inflicted with the young cub’s incompetence.

His sour reverie was interrupted as the soft song of a vath-bird echoed through his office. That was the signal announcing that his assistant wished to speak to him.

Glad to have something else about which to think, he pressed the control on his pedestal to deactivate the security mechanisms. The door retracted and Dal-Vas knuckle-walked to the resting frame in front of Ssor-Fel’s desk.

“I have a report on the Vulcans, Hunt Master,” Dal-Vas began without preamble.

“Vulcans?” Ssor-Fel asked, searching his memory for the name. It was in there somewhere. Finally, he remembered. “Ah, yes. The species we have been unable to identify. Have you found them, yet?”

“No, Hunt Master. Their identity remains a mystery. However, I have more information about this Sar-Say who sprayed danger pheromone over their trade goods.”

“Yes?”

“Sar-Say is a minor functionary of the Sar-Dva Clan and an ortho-cousin to Sar-Ganth, leader of the Originalists on the Council of Rulers. Sar-Say’s task was to tabulate the clan’s store of value on subservient worlds.”

“An accountant?”

“It would seem so. He was on a tour of clan holdings, traveling onboard a Vithian freighter. Records indicate that the freighter made two jumps en route from Vith to Perselin. Their computer contacted the gate in the Nala System and was preparing for jump. At that point, the records are incomplete.”

“Incomplete?”